,wm 



ct-. y 



,0o. 



















& **. 









^ ^ 






- 



O 









-V 



,0o. 



>> * , -. o > i0 



'/ 



A ' 



V 






fe 



"^1 



■^ » c 



**. 



= ^ 



- 



^ ^ 



^cP ^ 


















^ c 






*r 












V V 










bo 

n4 "7* 




^ 



L. I B . 



^. .-\ 




^ 



%<\ 



I GO A-FISHING 



BY 



W. C. PRIME 



S4& 



V%1 



NEW YORK: 

HARPER & BROTHERS, PUBLISHERS. 



l<S73 



Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1873, by 

Harper & Brothers, 

In the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington. 



HIC 

NULLA VOX MONTANI FLUMINIS 

NUMERUS NULLUS AQUARUM 

TALIS QUALIS EST 

ILLIC 

UBI IN RIPIS SACRIS JUCUNDITATE 

PERENNI QUIESCUNT QUORUM IN 

MEMORIAM ALMAM SCRIPTUM EST 

HOC VOLUMEN. 



CONTENTS. 



PAGE 

I. WHY PETER WENT A- FISHING 9 

II. AT THE ROOKERY 22 

III. ISKANDER EFFENDI 37 

IV. MORNING TROUT ; EVENING TALK 63 

V. SUNDAY MORNING AND EVENING 82 

VI. AN EXPLORING EXPEDITION 109 

VII. THE ST. REGIS WATERS IN OLD TIMES 122 

VIII. THE ST. REGIS WATERS NOW 1 38 

IX. CONNECTICUT STREAMS 157 

X. AMONG THE FRANCONIA MOUNTAINS 1 78 

XI. ON A MOUNTAIN BROOK 208 

XII. ON ECHO LAKE 235 

XIII. THREE BOTTLES OF CLARET 253 

XIV. WHAT FLIES TO CAST ON A SUNDAY 287 

XV. IN NORTHERN NEW HAMPSHIRE 301 

XVI. AT THE FERNS 32 1 

XVII. GOING HOME 35 1 



Digitized by the Internet Archive 
in 2011 with funding from 
The Library of Congress 



http://www.archive.org/details/igoafishing01prim 



WILL YOU GO? 

Good friend, you have read the title-page hereof, tell- 
ing you that I propose to go a-fishing, and the table of 
contents, which has given you some idea as to where I 
think of going. If you turn over this leaf it will imply 
that you accept the invitation to go with me. But be 
warned in time. The best of anglers does not always 
find fish ; and the most skillful casting of a fly does not 
always bring up trout. Often chubs and perch and red- 
fins — yea, even pickerel and pumpkin-seeds — rise to the 
fly, and you may be thereat disgusted. You can not be 
sure that you will find what you want, or what you will 
like, if you go beyond this page. If, however, you have 
the true angler's spirit, and will go a-fishing prepared to 
have a good day of it, even though the weather turn out 
vile and the sport wretched, then turn over the leaf and 
let us be starting. 



I GO A-FISHING. 



I. 

WHY PETER WENT A-FISHING. 

The light of the long Galilee day was dying out beyond 
the peaks of Lebanon. Far in the north, gleaming like a 
star, the snowy summit of Hermon received the latest ray 
of the twilight before gloom and night should descend on 
Gennesaret. The white walls of Bethsaida shone gray 
and cold on the northern border of the sea, looking to the 
whiter palace of Herod at its farther extremity, under 
whose very base began the majestic sweep of the Jordan. 
Perhaps the full moon was rising over the desolate hills 
of the Gadarenes, marking the silver pathway of the Lord 
across the holy sea. The stars that had glorified his 
birth in the Bethlehem cavern, that had shone on the gar- 
den agony and the garden tomb, were shining on the hill- 
sides that had been sanctified by his footsteps. The 
young daughter of Jairus looked from her casement in 
Capernaum on the silver lake, and remembered the solemn 
grandeur of that brow which now, they told her, had been 
torn with thorns. The son of her of Nain climbed the 
rocks which tower above his father's place of burial, and 
gazed down into the shining water, and pondered whether 



IO I GO A-FISHING. 

he who had been murdered'by the Jerusalem Hebrews had 
not power to say unto himself " Arise." 

Never was night more pure, never was sea more win- 
ning ; never were the hearts of men moved by deeper 
emotions than on that night and by that sea when Peter 
and John, and other of the disciples, were waiting for the 
Master. 

Peter said, "I go a-fishing." John and Thomas, and 
James and Nathanael, and the others, said, "We will go 
with you," and they went. 

Some commentators have supposed and taught that, 
when Peter said, " I go a-fishing," he announced the inten- 
tion of resuming, at least temporarily, his old mode of life, 
returning to the ways in which he had earned his daily 
bread from childhood ; that his Master was gone, and he 
thought that nothing remained for him but the old hard 
life of toil, and the sad labor of living. 

But this seems scarcely credible, or consistent with the 
circumstances. The sorrow which had weighed down tlie 
disciples when gathered in Jerusalem on that darkest 
Sabbath day of all the Hebrew story, had given way to 
joy and exultation in the morning when the empty tomb 
revealed the hitherto hidden glory of the resurrection, joy 
which was tenfold increased by an interview with the risen 
Lord, and confirmed by his direction, sending them into 
Galilee to await him there. And thus it seems incredible 
that Peter and John — John the beloved — could have been 
in any such gloom and despondency as to think of re- 
suming their old employment at this time, when they were 
actually waiting for his coming who had promised to meet 
them. 

Probably they were on this particular evening weary 
with earnest expectancy, not yet satisfied ; tired of waiting 



HAVE YOU ANY FISH? II 

and longing and looking up the hill-side on the Jerusa- 
lem road for his appearance ; and I have no doubt that, 
when this weariness became exhausting, Peter sought on 
the water something of the old excitement that he had 
known from boyhood, and that to all the group it seemed 
a fitting way in which to pass the long night before them, 
otherwise to be weary as well as sleepless. 

If one could have the story of that night of fishing, of 
the surrounding scenes, the conversation in the boat, the 
unspoken thoughts of the fishermen, it would make the 
grandest story of fishing that the world has ever known. 
Its end was grand when in the morning the voice of the 
Master came over the sea, asking them the familiar ques- 
tion, in substance the same which they, like all fishermen, 
had heard a thousand times, " Have you any fish ?"* 

* John xxi., 5 : " Children, have ye any meat ?" This translation, 
though literal, does not convey the idea of the original. The Greek 
is TIaidia, firj rt Trpoufdyiov ix lTl > an( l ^ e w °rd irpoafdyiov is used 
here, as in the best of the later Greek authors, to signify the kind of 
eatable article which the persons addressed were then seeking. Un- 
willing, in a matter of such importance (for every word of the Lord 
is of the highest importance) to trust my own limited knowledge of 
Greek, I read this page to one of the most trustworthy and eminent 
American scholars and divines one evening in my library, and the 
next morning received from him this note, which I take the liberty 
of appending : 

" October 21st, 1872. 

"My dear Sir, — You are quite right in your interpretation of 
John xxi., 5. ' Meat,' in Luke xxiv., 41, is simply food, fipwaifioQ, any 
thing to eat. But, in John xxi., 5, the word is Trpoccpdyiov, something 
eatable (but especially flesh or fish) in addition to (vrpog) bread, which 
in Palestine was then, as now, the chief diet of the people. Had the 
disciples been out hunting, the meaning would have been ' Have you 
any game ?' As they had been all night fishing, the meaning was, 
and they so understood it, ' Have you any fish ?' 

" Yours very truly, ." 



12 I GO A -FISHING. 

I am afraid that there was something of the human 
nature of disappointed fishermen in the Galilaeans that 
morning when they saw the gray dawn and had taken no 
fish, for their reply was in much the same tone that the 
unsatisfied angler in our day often uses in answer to that 
same inquiry. It is just possible that John, the gentle 
John, was the respondent. It may have been the some- 
what sensitive Peter, or possibly two or three of them to- 
gether, who uttered that curt " No," and then relapsed 
into silence. 

But when the musical voice of the Master came again 
over the water, and they cast where he bade them, John 
remembered that other day and scene, very similar to 
this, before they were the disciples of the Lord, when he 
went with them in their boat and gave them the same 
command, with the same miraculous result, and said to 
Simon, " Henceforth thou shalt catch men." 

The memory of this scene is not unfitting to the mod- 
ern angler. Was it possible to forget it when I first wet 
a line in the water of the Sea of Galilee ? Is it any less 
likely to come back to me on any lake among the hills 
when the twilight hides the mountains, and overhead the 
same stars look on our waters that looked on Gennesaret, 
so that the soft night air feels on one's forehead like the 
dews of Hermon ? 

I do not think that this was the last, though it be the 
last recorded fishing done by Peter or by John. I don't 
believe these Galilee fishermen ever lost the love for their 
old employment. It was a memorable fact for them that 
the Master had gone a-fishing with them on the day that 
he called them to be his disciples ; and this latest meeting 
with him in Galilee, the commission to Peter, " Feed my 
sheep," and the words so startling to John, " If I will that 



THE LOVE OF FISHING. 13 

he tarry till I come " — words which he must have recalled 
when he uttered that last longing cry, " Even so come, 
Lord" — all these were associated with that last recorded 
fishing scene on the waters of Gennesaret. 

Fishermen never lose their love for the employment. 
And it is notably true that the men who fish for a living 
love their work quite as much as those who fish for pleas- 
ure love their sport. Find an old fisherman, if you can, 
in any sea-shore town, who does not enjoy his fishing. 
There are days, without doubt, when he does not care to 
go out, when he would rather that need did not drive 
him to the sea ; but keep him at home a few days, or set 
him at other labor, and you shall see that he longs for the 
toss of the swell on the reef, and the sudden joy of a strong 
pull on his line. Drift up alongside of him in your boat 
when he is quietly at his work, without his knowing that 
you are near. You can do> it easily. He is pondering 
solemnly a question of deep importance to him, and he 
has not stirred eye, or hand, or head for ten minutes. But 
see that start and sharp jerk of his elbow, and now hear 
him talk, not to you — to' the fish. He exults as he brings 
him in, yet mingles his exultation with something of pity 
as he baits his hook for another. Could you gather the 
words that he has in many years flung on the sea-winds, 
you would have a history of his life and adventures, min- 
gled with very much of his inmost thinking, for he tells 
much to the sea and the fish that he would never whisper 
in human ears. Thus the habit of going a-fishing always 
modifies the character. The angler, I think, dreams of 
his favorite sport oftener than other men of theirs. There 
is a peculiar excitement in it, which perhaps arises from 
somewhat of the same causes which make the interest in 
searching for ancient treasures, opening Egyptian tombs, 



14 I GO A -FISHING. 

and digging into old ruins. One does not know what is 
under the surface. There may be something or there 
may be nothing. He tries, and the rush of something 
startles every nerve. Let no man laugh at a comparison 
of trout-fishing with antiquarian researches. I know a 
man who has done a great deal of both, and who scarcely 
knows which is most absorbing or most remunerating ; 
for each enriches mind and body, each gratifies the most 
refined tastes, each becomes a passion unless the pursuer 
guard his enthusiasm and moderate his desires. 

It is nothing strange that men who throw their flies for 
trout should dream of it. 

As long ago as when Theocritus wrote his Idyls, men 
who caught fish dreamed of their sport or work, whichev- 
er it was. It can not, indeed, be said that the Greek fish- 
erman dreamed of the mere excitement of fishing, for to 
him the sea was a place of toil, and his poor hut was but 
a miserable hovel. He fished for its reward in gold ; and 
he dreamed that he took a fish of gold, whose value would 
relieve him from the pains and toils of his life, and when 
he was awake he feared that he had bound himself by an 
oath in his dream, and his wise companion — philosopher 
then, as all anglers were, and are, and will be evermore — 
relieved him by a brief sermon, wherein lies a moral. 
Look it up, and read it. What angler does not dream of 
great fish rising with heavy roll and plunge to seize the 
fly ? What dreams those are ! 

Is there any thing strange, then, in the question wheth- 
er Peter in his slumber never dreamed of the great fish 
in the Sea of Galilee, or the gentle John, in his old age 
and weary longing for the end, did not sometimes recall 
in sleep other and more earthly scenes than the sub- 
lime visions of inspiration ? Do you doubt — I do not — 



CHRISTOPHER NORTH. 1 5 

that his great soul, over which had swept floods of emo- 
tion such as few other human souls have ever experi- 
enced, was yet so fresh and young, even in the days of 
rock-bound Patmos, and long after at Ephesus, when he 
counted a hundred years of life, that in sleep he some- 
times sat in his boat, rocked by the waves of the blue 
Gennesaret, his black locks shaking in the breeze that 
came down from Hermon, his eyes wandering from Ta- 
bor to Gilboa, from Gilboa to Lebanon, from Lebanon to 
the wild hills of the Gadarenes, while he caught the shy 
but beautiful fish that were born in the Jordan, and lived 
in the waters that were by Capernaum and Bethsaida ? 

To you, my friend, who know nothing of the gentle and 
purifying associations of the angler's life, these may seem 
strange notions — to some, indeed, they may even sound 
profane. But the angler for whom I write will not so 
think them, nor may I, who, thinking these same thoughts, 
have cast my line on the Sea of Galilee, and taken the 
descendants of old fish in the swift waters of the Jordan. 

Trout-fishing is employment for all men, of all minds. 
It tends to dreamy life, and it leads to much thought and 
reflection. I do not know in any book or story of mod- 
ern times a more touching and exquisite scene than that 
which Mrs. Gordon gives in her admirable biography of 
her father, the leonine Christopher North, when the fee- 
ble old man waved his rod for the last time over the Doc- 
hart, where he had taken trout from his boyhood. Shall 
we ever look upon his like again ? He was a giant 
among men of intellectual greatness. Of all anglers 
since apostolic days, he was the greatest ; and there is 
no angler who does not look to him with veneration 
and love, while the English language will forever possess 
higher value that he has lived and written. It would be 



1 6 I GO A -FISHING. 

thought very strange were one to say that Wilson would 
never have been half the man he was were he not an 
angler. But he would have said so himself, and I am not 
sure but he did say so, and, whether he did or not, I have 
no doubt of the truth of the saying. 

It has happened to me to fish the Dochart from the 
old inn at Luib down to the bridge, and the form of the 
great Christopher was forever before me along the bank 
and in the rapids, making his last casts as Mrs. Gordon 
here so tenderly describes him : 

" Had my father been able to endure the fatigue, we 
too would have had something to boast of; but he was 
unable to do more than loiter by the river-side close in 
the neighborhood of the inn — never without his rod. * * * 
How now do his feet touch the heather ? Not as of old 
with a bound, but with slow and unsteady step, supported 
on the one hand by his stick, while the other carries his 
rod. The breeze gently moves his locks, no longer glit- 
tering with the light of life, but dimmed by its decay. 
Yet are his shoulders broad and unbent. The lion-like 
presence is somewhat softened down, but not gone. He 
surely will not venture into the deeps of the water, for 
only one hand is free for ' a cast,' and those large stones, 
now slippery with moss, are dangerous stumbling-blocks 
in the way. Besides, he promised his daughters he 
would not wade, but, on the contrary, walk quietly with 
them by the river's edge, there gliding ' at its own sweet 
will.' Silvery bands of pebbled shore leading to loamy- 
colored pools, dark as the glow of a southern eye, how 
could he resist the temptation of near approach ? In he 
goes, up to the ankles, then to the knees, tottering every 
other step, but never falling. Trout after trout he catch- 
es, small ones certainly, but plenty of them. Into his 
pocket with them, all this time manoeuvring in the most 
skillful manner both stick and rod : until weary, he is 
obliged to rest on the bank, sitting with his feet in the 
water, laughing at his daughters' horror, and obstinately 



CHRISTOPHER NORTH. 1 7 

continuing the sport in spite of all remonstrance. At 
last he gives in and retires. Wonderful to say, he did 
not seem to suffer from these imprudent liberties." 

And Mrs. Gordon gives us another exquisite picture in 
the very last days of the grand old Christopher : 

* * ' * " And then he gathered around him, when the 
spring mornings brought gay jets of sunshine into the 
little room where he lay, the relics of a youthful passion, 
one that with him never grew old. It was an affecting 
sight to see him busy, nay, quite absorbed with the fish- 
ing-tackle scattered about his bed, propped up with pil- 
lows — his noble head, yet glorious with its flowing locks, 
carefully combed by attentive hands, and falling on each 
side of his unfaded face. How neatly he picked out 
each elegantly dressed fly from its little bunch, drawing 
it out with trembling hand along the white coverlet, and 
then, replacing it in his pocket-book, he would tell ever 
and anon of the streams he used to fish in of old, and of 
the deeds he had performed in his childhood and youth." 

There is no angler who will not appreciate the beauty 
of these pictures, and I ,do not believe any one of us, re- 
taining his mental faculties, will fail in extremest age to 
recall with the keenest enjoyment of which memory is 
capable the scenes of our happiest sport. 

Was Peter less or more than man ? Was John not of 
like passions with ourselves ? Believe me, the old dweller 
on Patmos, the old Bishop of Ephesus, lingering between 
the memories of his Lord in Galilee and the longing for 
him to come quickly yet again, saw often before his dim 
eyes the ripple on Gennesaret, and the flashing scales of 
the silver fish that had gladdened him many a time be- 
fore he knew the Master. 

I have sometimes thought it more than possible that 
the young son of Joseph and Mary knew the Galilee fish- 

B 



l8 I GO A- FISHING. 

ermen before he called them to be his apostles. There 
is nothing to forbid, but much to fortify the idea in the 
account which Luke gives us of his entering into the 
ship of Simon, and asking him to push off from the shore 
while he taught the people ; and still more in the subse- 
quent incidents, when, like one who had often been with 
them before, he told Simon to go out into deep water 
and cast for fish. He may indeed have been a stran- 
ger, who impressed Simon now for the first time with his 
noble presence, and won him by his eloquent teachings, 
but I incline to the thought that this was far from the 
first meeting of Jesus of Nazareth with the fishermen of 
Gennesaret. Nazareth was not far away from the sea. I 
remember a morning's walk from the village to the sum- 
mit of Tabor, whence I first saw the blue beauty of that 
lake of holy memory. How his childhood and youth 
were passed we know not ; but that he wandered over 
the hills, and walked down to the lake shore, and min- 
gled more or less with the people among whom his life 
went peacefully on until he entered upon his public mis- 
sion, can not be doubted. 

It is one of the most pleasant and absorbing thoughts 
which possess the traveler in those regions, that the child 
Christ was a child among the hills of Galilee, and loved 
them with all the gentle fervor of his human soul. Doubt- 
less many times before he had challenged the fisher on 
the sea with that same question which we anglers so fre- 
quently hear, " Have you taken any fish ?" He may have 
often seen Peter and the others at their work. Perhaps 
sometimes he had talked with them, and, it may well be, 
gone with them on the sea, and helped them. For they 
were kindly men, as fishermen are always in all countries, 
and they loved to talk of their work, and of a thousand 



APOSTOLIC FISHERMEN. 1 9 

other things of which, in their contemplative lives, they 
had thought without talking. 

In an age when few men were learned, and, in fact, 
few in any grade or walk of life could even read or write, 
I am inclined to think there was no class from whom 
better trained intellects could be selected than from 
among these thoughtful fishermen. They had doubtless 
the Oriental characteristics of calmness and reserve, and 
these had been somewhat modified by their employment. 
Given to sober reflection, patient to investigate, quick to 
trust when their faith was demanded by one whom they 
respected, slow to act when haste was not necessary, 
prompt and swift on any emergency, filled full of love 
for nature, all harsh elements of character softened into 
a deep benevolence and pity and love — such are the 
fishermen of our day, and such, I doubt not, were the 
fishermen of old. They were men with whom a mother 
would willingly trust her young boy, to whom he would 
become attached, with whom he would enjoy talking, 
and, above all, who would pour out their very souls in 
talking with him, when among their fellow -men they 
would be reserved, diffident, and silent. They were men, 
too, who would recognize in the boy the greatness of his 
lineage, the divine shining out from his eyes. Who shall 
prevail to imagine the pleasantness of those days on the 
sea when Peter and John talked with the holy boy, as 
they waited for the fish, and their boat rocked to the 
winds that came down from Lebanon. Who can say 
that there were not some memories of those days, as 
well as of the others when we know Christ was with 
him, which, when he was tired of the waiting, led Peter 
to say, " I go a-fishing." 

I believe that he went a-fishing because he felt exactly 



20 I GO A -FISHING. 

as I have felt, exactly as scores of men have felt who 
knew the charm of the gentle art, as we now call it. No 
other has such attraction. Men love hunting, love boat- 
ing, love games of varied sorts, love many amusements 
of many kinds, but I do not know of any like fishing to 
which men go for relief in weariness, for rest after labor, 
for solace in sorrow. I can well understand how those 
sad men, not yet fully appreciating the grand truth that 
their Master had risen from the dead, believing, yet 
doubting, how even Thomas, who had so lately seen the 
wounds and heard the voice, how even John, loving and 
loved, who had rejoiced a week ago in Jerusalem at the 
presence of the triumphant Lord, how Peter, always fear- 
ful, how Nathanael, full of impulsive faith, how each and 
all of them, wearied with their long waiting for him on 
the shore of the sea, sought comfort and solace, oppor- 
tunity and incitement to thought in going a-fishing. 

I can understand it, for, though far be it from me to 
compare any weariness or sorrow of mine with theirs, I 
have known that there was no better way in which I could 
find rest. And I have gathered together the chapters of 
this book, if perchance it may serve as a companion to 
any one who would go a-fishing if he could, but can not, 
or help another who has gone a-fishing to enjoy the rest 
which he has thus obtained. I have written for lovers of 
the gentle art, and if this which I have written fall into 
other hands, let him who reads understand that it is not 
for him. We who go a-fishing are a peculiar people. 
Like other men and women in many respects, we are like 
one another, and like no others, in other respects. We 
understand each other's thoughts by an intuition of which 
you know nothing. We cast our flies on many waters, 
where memories and fancies and facts rise, and we take 



anglers' PECULIARITIES. 21 

them and show them to each other, and, small or large, 
we are content with our catch. So closely are we alike 
in some regards, so different from the rest of the world in 
these respects, and so important are these characteristics 
of mind and of thought, that I sometimes think no man 
but one of us can properly understand the mind of Peter, 
or appreciate the glorious visions of the son of Zebedee. 



II. 

AT THE ROOKERY. 

It can not be supposed that one who has not been ac- 
customed to it should find that refreshment in going 
a-fishing which is so welcome to him who knows it by 
old experience ; yet it is a habit of body and mind easily 
cultivated, and much to be commended. Every hard- 
working man should have a hobby. This is sound doc- 
trine. Especially should the professional man and the 
active business man remember this. He whose mind is 
occupied during the day with severe labor will find it im- 
possible at evening to abandon his work. The responsi- 
bilities of the day will weigh on him at night ; he can not 
rid himself of them. Social enjoyment, conversation, or- 
dinary amusement, and recreation will serve but a tem- 
porary purpose, and can not be relied on to divert the 
mind from anxiety and care. Try the experiment. Take 
to collecting engravings or coins or shells, or any thing 
else, so it be a subject to interest you, and make a hobby 
of it. It will absorb the mind, enable it to throw off all 
business thought, afford sensible relief and refreshment, 
and be a great insurance against those diseases of the 
brain which close the labors and usefulness of so many 
strong intellects. 

The summer vacation, which is about the only recre- 
ation that an American professional or business man 



AT THE ROOKERY. 23 

allows himself, is apt to be wasted entirely by the want of 
mental refreshment which can not be found in the ordi- 
nary resorts of summer pleasure-seekers. The vacation 
does little good to him who carries his business on his 
brain ; and it too frequently happens that men go to 
places where they have no resort for amusement except 
to the newspapers and the business talk of other weary 
men like themselves. It is not every man who should go 
a-fishing, but there are many who would find this their 
true rest and recreation of body and mind. And having, 
either in boyhood or in later life, learned by experience 
how pleasant it is to go a-fishing, you will find, as Peter 
found, that you are drawn to it whenever you are weary, 
impatient, or sad. 

In every opening spring anglers feel the longing for 
the country and the trout streams. It is something more 
than longing, it is an essential — the necessity of going a- 
fishing — a necessity which the angler well appreciates, but 
which may seem inexplicable to him who has no love for 
the gentle art. In the cold days and nights of winter the 
love of the streams and lakes is intense enough, but it is 
not active — it is not a propelling motive. It is delicious 
to remember the last year's enjoyment, to recall the mu- 
sic of waters which have long ago run to the seas ; of 
trees shaken by winds that have died to rest. Ah ! the 
delight of such recollections ! 

They are like attendant spirits, dwelling in our city 
houses, making themselves known only in the evening, 
when the firelight shines into unfathomed distances. Many 
an evening in the winter they talk to me as I sit by the 
library fire, and it is quaint and queer to hear them talk, 
and very pleasant withal. There are two pictures on 
the wall which seem to be the resting-places of two op- 



24 I GO A -FISHING. 

posing tribes of spirits. On the one side a grand old 
piece of flesh representing Paul, the first hermit, by Ribe- 
ra, and on the other side a Flora, by an unknown artist, 
very beautiful and very breezy, with flowers abundant, the 
very light of spring beaming out of her eyes. In Novem- 
ber and December the Spagnoletto has the advantage. 
The dark but loving old eyes, the massive yet delicate 
features, the profound expression of devotion, all seem in 
keeping with the winter, and with one's own humor. It 
indeed speaks of the country, but of the desert of the 
Thebaid, where among rocks and yellow sand the raven 
fed the saint, and Anthony found and buried him. So, as 
the evenings pass, one may read or work, looking up at 
the hermit's face, and catching now and then an inspira- 
tion like that of the old ages, breathing in the atmosphere 
of the early times. But as March passes into April, and 
April yields to May, Flora grows glorious in her beauty, 
and laughs triumphantly across at Paul, who has kept her 
quiet for so long. Now she wields her power. Every 
look out of her eyes is a command — " Meet me in the up- 
country." It is astonishing, the manner in which these 
two pictures keep up this annual contest, and it has been 
so often repeated that they now seem to take it as a mat- 
ter of course, and each keeps within its own domain of 
time. Is the secret in the pictures, or in the man who in- 
habits the room ? 

If the angler be not impelled by the command of a 
visible queen of May, he always feels the unconquerable 
necessity of going a-fishing when the spring comes. It 
can't be resisted. He might as well try to shake off the 
impulse of waking up in the morning, and resolve to 
sleep on forever. Thus it happened that I was driven off, 
drawn off, tempted off, call it what you will, to visit an old 



THE ROOKERY. 25 

friend whose home in the country has been a home for 
a few lovers of him and of trout these many years. It is 
a spot like which there are not many — of exceeding beau- 
ty and attractiveness. The winds sigh as they pass over 
it, because they can not pause and sleep as I do there. 
The hemlocks on the mountain bend down toward it, 
longing for that far day when they shall fall and rest on 
the hill-side, and that more distant day when, dust of the 
earth, they shall be brought by gentle rains down to the 
depths of the valley, and find the calm that is so undis- 
turbed and perfect. 

Many years ago, my friend discovered the spot and in- 
habited it. It had been for a long time previous almost 
a wilderness, though across the mountain, a few miles off, 
was a fine farming country. The Rookery took its name 
from an old log house which at first satisfied the wants 
of an angler coming here only to pass a few days or 
weeks in quiet sport. But a frame house grew against 
the log house, and then a large and roomy stone house, 
with abundance of places for friends ; and then, as he 
loved the spot more and more for its associations, he filled 
it with furniture, and brought his library from his city 
house, and began to live here nine months of the year. 
The glen became a very paradise. The bottom-land, when 
cleared and drained, was a rich farm ; and a few houses 
for his workmen made a settlement in the heart of the 
forest. Then civilization approached in the shape of a 
railroad, with a station two miles off, and the inevitable 
law of human weakness introduced luxury into this once 
remote forest home in the shape of regular newspapers — 
the morning papers of the city — fortunately cooled off 
from their city heat and impetuosity of thought and ex- 
pression by a long day's ride on the rail before they reach 



26 I GO A-FISHING. 

the Rookery. Still, this is a forest home. The acres, 
which count by the thousand, include mountains and 
lakes, and you must drive a long way from the house be- 
fore you strike on any sign of other human residence. 

Just in front of the house the mountains open in a ra- 
vine, and down this comes a noble stream, wherein the 
trout lie cool and quiet. Over the hill, in the winds of 
September, the fat deer snuff the birch breezes, and come 
sauntering down to the copse behind the gardens, where 
they sometimes startle little Ellie, the gardener's daugh- 
ter, who runs in with brown eyes wide open, and tells of 
the flashing eyes and lofty antlers that scared her as she 
stood at the little swinging gate. 

I can not linger on these descriptions. You have heard 
of such spots — dreamed of them. Some day, " if you are 
good, and deserve it," as Ellie saith, I will bring you 
here, where I found a company of old friends, and where, 
with John Steenburger, the traveler, and John Johnston, 
the clergyman, and others, old friends of Philip Alexan- 
der, our host, I have let many a blessed month of May die 
and be carried away by the breath of June without lament- 
ing it. There has been other pleasant company there 
that will not be there again, and that recollection gives us 
all a love for the old place. 

The night had been cool and delightful. We had slept 
the sleep of the innocent, but the Doctor roused me by 
stumbling into my room before daybreak and lighting a 
candle, wherewith he found my fly-book, and then sat 
down to examine it. When, at last, I persuaded myself 
to open my eyes, it was to see him at work by the candle- 
light, dressing a fly for the benefit of the fish that he had 
seen yesterday in a deep hole a mile up the glen. As 
he worked he sang, changing the tune and time occasion- 



DOCTOR JOHNSTON. 27 

ally, for now it was a bit of a psalm and a psalm tune, 
and now it was the fag end of an unholy opera air that 
he enunciated, and, as he finished the fly, he brought out 
a profound bass " in seada seadorum " that would have 
done credit to the celebrated throat which makes music 
in St. Roche on feast days. 

For the Doctor, be it known to you, has a taste for mu- 
sic, and an ear for all beautiful sounds, even as Squire 
John — that is, John Steenburger, the traveler — has for all 
beautiful sights. Hence the Doctor will pause sometimes 
and listen to the melody of wind and water among the 
hills, and say " Beautiful ;" and the Squire will think he 
speaks of the view, which is pre-eminently bad at the mo- 
ment, and the result is generally what would be called 
a discussion elsewhere, but what we call a row between 
the two Johns. 

" A — men !" sang the Squire from his room opening 
into mine, as he heard the Doctor's finale. " I say, Ef- 
fendi, what is the Doctor at in your quarters ?" 

"Setting snares for the unwary. Rising up early to 
entrap innocence. The man of blood is arming himself 
and sharpening his weapons." 

" Come, come. None of your nonsense, you two. Let 
us be off early." 

"Why, Doctor, the trout haven't had their breakfasts 
yet. You wouldn't — " 

" Wouldn't I ?" And I left my bed on one side as a 
ewer of water came into it on the other from the unmer- 
ciful hands of the churchman, who claims to be the com- 
mander-in-chief of our small party, and exercises a most 
tyrannous rule over us. 

A cup of coffee was ready in the breakfast-room, where 
Philip joined us. The dim morning light was not sum- 



28 I GO A- FISHING. 

cient to make visible the ebony face of Simon ; but his 
teeth reflected the dawn as he let us out at the front door 
of the old kitchen, and we strode off into the twilight of 
the park and the forest. 

Half an hour's walk brought us to the bank of the 
stream, two miles up the glen. We proposed to whip it 
down to the house, for it crossed the road fifty rods from 
the end of the mansion. 

The Doctor walked ahead, talking vehemently. 

The sun was rising as we reached the water, and the 
first ray fell on the ripple with the white fly of the Doc- 
tor's morning work. 

I appreciate wholly your exclamation, my good friend, 
when you read of a white fly on running water at sunrise 
of a clear day. It does not seem right to you. In point 
of fact, it seems absurd, and you begin to doubt at once 
whether the Doctor knew any thing about fishing. Trust 
him for that. He knows more about it than you or I will 
ever learn. For trout-fishing is an art which can never 
be learned from books, and which experience alone will 
teach. 

It is noteworthy, and has doubtless often attracted the 
attention of anglers, that different books give totally dif- 
ferent instructions and information about the same fish. 
This is easily explained. Most of the writers on angling 
have written from experience obtained in certain waters. 
One who has taken trout for a score of years in the St. 
Regis waters forms his opinion of these fish from their 
habits in those regions. But a St. Regis trout is no more 
like a Welokennebacook trout in his habits than a Boston 
gentleman is like a New-Yorker. Who would think of 
describing the habits and customs of mankind from a 
knowledge of the Englishman ? Yet we have abundance 



HABITS OF TROUT. 29 

of book-lore on the habits of fish, founded on acquaint- 
ance with the fish in one or another locality. To say- 
truth, until one has studied the habits of trout in all the 
waters of the world, it is unsafe for him to venture any 
general account of those habits. 

Take the simplest illustration. If you are on the lower 
St. Regis, and seek large trout, rise before the sun, and 
cast for the half-hour preceding and the hour following 
sunrise. You will find the fish plenty and voracious, 
striking with vigor, and evidently on the feed. But go to 
Profile Lake (that gem of all the world of waters), wherein 
I have taken many thousand trout, and you will scarcely 
ever have a rise in the morning. In the one lake the fish 
are in the habit of feeding at day-dawn. In the other no 
trout breakfasts till nine o'clock, unless, like the depart- 
ing guests in the neighboring hotel, business or pleasure 
lead him to be up for once at an early hour. 

So, too, you may cast on Profile Lake at noon in the 
sunshine, and, as in most waters, though the trout are 
abundant, they will not be tempted to rise. But in Echo 
Lake, only a half-mile distant, where trout are scarce, I 
have killed many fish of two and three pounds' weight, 
and nearly all between eleven and one o'clock in bright 
sunshiny weather. In fact, when they rise at all on Echo 
Lake, it is almost invariably at that hour, and very seldom 
at any other. Men have their hours of eating, settled into 
what we call habits. The Bostonian dines at one hour, 
the New-Yorker at another. One should not attempt to 
describe the eating habits of man in general from either 
class, or from both. In many respects the habits of fish 
are formed, as are the habits of men, by the force of cir- 
cumstances, or by the influence of the imitative propensity. 
They do some things only because they have seen other 



30 I GO A- FISHING. 

fish do so. Instinct leads them to some habits, education 
to others. 

Now to return to the white fly. The discussion is quite 
vain, into which so many fishermen have gone, on the 
question whether the artificial fly is to be used on the im- 
itation theory. Trout take some flies because they resem- 
ble the real fly on which they feed. They take other flies 
for no such reason. And in this they are like men. If 
you have entered a restaurant to dine, having made up 
your mind to eat roast beef, you will not be moved by any 
eloquence of the waiter who recommends the mutton or 
the turkey, or any number of other dishes. Roast beef 
you want, and you will have it. So, when trout are feed- 
ing on a particular fly, and have their appetites set upon 
it, you will see them rising every where to take that fly, 
and you can not coax them to touch one of all that you 
are able to offer them unless you happen to have an imi- 
tation of that bonne bouche. Yet it may occur that one 
or another trout has no such set appetite, and once in a 
while such a rover will take your offer of almost any thing. 

The Doctor had his reasons therefore for dressing a 
white fly. If I were compelled to give a theory on the 
subject, I should refer to my experience. I have fre- 
quently killed trout in swift water with a white fly at 
midday, and I think the trout takes it for a fish and not 
a fly ; for I have observed that he generally seizes it 
with open mouth on a sharp rush, and does not strike it 
first with his tail, as he does usually in taking a fly. 

The white fly raised a pound fish, and the doctor 
landed him after a brief run. Then another not so large, 
and then a half dozen smaller fish. So his theory was 
sustained. 

We worked diligently for half an hour down the bank, 



A FINE TROUT. 3 1 

till we approached the spot which our friend had in his 
mind. We took an excellent run of trout all along. I 
think the morning's work was better than usual, and our 
spirits rose as we strolled through the grand old forest. 
The river was full of music, the rush of every rapid was 
loud and clear and ringing. The sharp cry of the wood- 
pecker sounded shrill across the valley, while an occa- 
sional partridge that we put up here and there went off 
with a buzzing, thunderous flight that was altogether use- 
less under the circumstances, for it was May, and we 
carried only rods. 

" Ha ! I have him now," said the Doctor, suddenly, as 
he struck a fine trout. 

He was a pretty specimen, but I had seen a larger one 
rise at the same fly, and, when he missed it, turn down 
toward the eddy under a rock in the middle of the 
stream. Philip saw him too. 

"My head against your wig he kills the largest fish 
of the day within ten minutes, Doctor." 

" I wear my own hair, Philip, as I have before, re- 
marked to you." 

I had him ; my reel flew around with a sharp whirr as 
he went down stream. 

The Doctor looked on with disappointment in his 
whole countenance. It was the very trout for whose de- 
lectation he had tied that fly. 

The bend of the rod, the gentle feeling with the finger 
as I checked the run of the line, told his weight almost 
as accurately as a spring scale. Don't imagine always 
that anglers have no authority for their figures when 
they tell of large fish that they have struck and lost. I 
know men who are accustomed to tell the weight of their 
fish before they have seen them above water, and who 



32 I GO A -FISHING. 

will hit it correctly within an ounce or two nine times 
out of ten ; for the angler knows his rod, and it grows 
to his hand like a part of it, so that he feels the fish on 
it as if he were in his very grasp. 

He went down stream thirty yards, and then yielded 
to the pressure and swung across the current. Just for 
a moment it seemed as if he would try it again down the 
current, and, if so, I must follow him, for I had only ten 
yards of line left on the reel. But the hook held well, 
and the angry fish began a series of rushes from one 
side of the stream to the other, back and across, again 
and again, darting like an arrow, as if at each rush he 
would go high out on the land, but turning with incon- 
ceivable swiftness at each bank. Then suddenly, and 
in a style wholly uncommon with the brook trout, he 
started down stream, over a low fall and into a deep 
hole, where he sulked like a salmon. 

The Doctor had watched me with intense anxiety — so 
intense that he forgot his own line and fly, and stood 
with his mouth and eyes wide open as the reel flew 
around with its shrill noise. He uttered an ejaculation 
of satisfaction when the sound ceased, and now accom- 
panied me as I made my way down the bank, slowly 
winding in the slack of the line without disturbing the 
gentleman who had hold of the other end. 

" Easy, easy, now; don't hurry yourself, boy." 

" Be quiet, Doctor ; your pulpit voice and declamatory 
style will stir up his friend down there. Do be quiet." 

" Hum. You're impertinent, Philip ; and, besides that, 
you know as well as I that fish can't hear. That's set- 
tled now beyond a question." 

" I say, Effendi, just give the Doctor your rod. He'll 
not be content till he has it in his own hands." 



THE DOCTOR'S PLUNGE. 33 

" He can't have it, John." 

We were now close over the deep hole. The stream 
was here some forty feet across, and took a short turn 
to the westward ; the result was a deep undermining of 
the left bank. Close to the edge was the stump of a 
large tree ; the roots went into the water in a dozen 
strange twists and curves. But they prevented the fur- 
ther washing away of the bank, and the result was a deep 
hole, in which the trout found refuge. 

" Wait, just one second, till I look over !" said the Doc- 
tor ; and, dropping on his hands and knees, he crept to 
the edge of the overhanging bank, and leaned as far over 
the water as his neck and arms would allow. The view 
of the somewhat ponderous body of the learned fisher- 
man, in this peculiar posture, was not a little picturesque ; 
but how much more so was it when the edge of the bank 
suddenly gave way, and the descending head of the Doc- 
tor vanished and his feet followed with a celerity that 
was most remarkable. A guttural " Phil — up — up — puh " 
— a tremendous splash, a white foam flying into the air — 
and it was all over. 

Perhaps you think we rushed to the rescue. We did 
no such thing. We sat down on the ground and shouted ; 
we rolled among the dead leaves and rent the air with 
our shrieks. When we could speak we thought of the 
Doctor's probable fate, and then looked toward the water 
for the first time. 

There was his face — ghastly and alarmingly severe. 
He had one of the roots in both hands. It was pretty 
far under water, and required a severe stretch for him to 
keep his chin above. This he had accomplished ; but 
he could not raise his eyes to the level of the bank, and 
could only gather from our shouts in what way we were 

C 



34 I GO A -FISHING. 

occupied. When he was fairly out and on the bank he 
was a subject for an artist. 

But I landed my fish. He of course left when the 
Doctor plunged, and, crossing the basin, had doubtless 
been in a state of astonishment at all the events of the 
morning. He had not gotten rid of the hook ; and when 
I picked up my rod I felt him there, and soon brought 
him to the landing-net, three pounds and three quarters 
plump, as noble a fish as one could desire. 

The Doctor was not the man to give up a morning's 
sport for a wetting, and, when we had with some difficulty 
negotiated a treaty of peace, after what he called our gross 
treason and abominable treatment of him, we sauntered 
on down the stream, and filled our baskets with fine 
specimens. 

We had a late breakfast, and a bountiful one, at the 
Rookery. Nothing goes more to the heart of a fisherman 
than a good cup of coffee, and this, if he is knowing, he 
will manage to have almost every where. In Philip's 
house it is so regularly good that it would doubtless make 
itself of a morning in perfection if there were no cook. 
Making good coffee is fast getting to be one of the lost 
arts. Certainly one meets it now very seldom in Amer- 
ica, and still more seldom in Europe. Traveling in our 
own country, at hotels, railway stations, and even in pri- 
vate houses, the stuff called coffee is a vile, wishywashy 
drink, worse than warm water. There is no excuse for 
this when good coffee is so easily made. The rule is as 
simple as possible. First buy good coffee. If your sense 
of smell is not educated to accomplish the purchase with 
judgment, get some one who can smell to buy it for you. 
Roast it brown. Then take a half-pint of ground coffee, 
break an egg in it, pour on three half-pints of cold water, 



COFFEE. 35 

and set it on the fire. No matter whether it is in an open 
tin pan or a close coffee-pot. Don't let it boil three sec- J 
onds. The instant it foams up your coffee is ready. Pour . 
it through a cloth strainer, and to a fourth of a cupful of : 
the coffee add three fourths of hot milk. Via tout. You 
have a cup of aromatic bliss. Old fishermen know all 
about this, and in forest life have better coffee in camp 

than can be had at the Cafe Foi in Paris. 

i 

For the Parisian cafe is not what it used to be. A cup 
of coffee has not been attainable for years past in Paris, 
except in the lowest-class restaurants. If you seek it, go 
to the environs of a market — the little Marche St. Hono- 
ree, for example — and in one of the miserable shops 
where the market people get their early breakfasts, you 
may find, what you used to find in every restaurant, a 
good bowl of cafe-au-lait. 

A cup of coffee is full of refreshing memories. The 
sense which more than all others recalls old scenes is the 
sense of smell. Odors, good or bad, are quick reminders. 
Neither hearing nor sight nor touch nor taste has half 
the power to recall the vanished past. 

" Effendi," said Philip, before he lifted the coffee to his 
lips at breakfast that morning, " what has become of our 
old friend Abd-el-Kader, who was Nadir in Upper Egypt 
when I met you at Thebes in fifty-six ?" 

" What, in the name of wonder, has started such an in- 
quiry ?" said Dr. Johnston, looking curiously at Philip. 

" I'm sure I don't know. Is there any thing odd about 
my question ?" 

" Nothing odd ; only remarkably remote from any thing 
hereabouts." 

" Not so," I said. " It was the coffee. The only time 
that Philip and I met in Egypt was at Edfou, one after- 



36 I GO A -FISHING. 

noon when Abd-el-Kader was holding his appellate court 
under a tree on the bank of the Nile, and we drank cof- 
fee and smoked latakia with him for an hour before he 
came down to my boat. His coffee was the best of Mocha, 
and this has Mocha in it, eh, Philip ?" 

" Right. It is half Mocha and half old Java. I learned 
the mixture once at Aden, and have always kept it up." 

" How happened it that you and the Effendi met in the 
East, Philip ? I never heard that you were a traveler." 

" It's a long story." 

"All the better ; let us have it." 

" Not just now," said Philip, with a somewhat sad 
smile, turning to me a wistful sort of look, as if he were 
half inclined to tell the story. Thereby I knew, what I 
had long suspected, that my friend had some secret in his 
breast which might with relief to him be imparted to oth- 
ers ; for I had only known him twenty years or so, and 
mostly as a fisherman, and he was one of the sort who 
wins one's heart. He was a man of rare accomplish- 
ments, much older than I, yet with a vigorous frame. So 
I said quietly, " Let us go a-fishing this afternoon, and 
perhaps this evening Philip will tell us the story." 

So we went out that evening under the great trees, and 
walked and talked and fished, and fished and talked and 
walked ; and when the dark came down on us, and John 
was speaking of something that happened to him in Jeru- 
salem, our friend turned to me, and spoke in a soft, gut- 
tural Arabic — 

" Effendi, shall I tell my story ?" 

" Is it peace ?" 

" It is peace." 

"Good. Say on, Iskander Effendi." 



III. 

ISKANDER EFFENDI. 

" It is somewhat strange that you people have known 
me so long and have known so little about me. But that 
is the way of the world. I have had nothing to conceal, 
and it only happens that you never before put the ques- 
tion to me plainly, 'Have you a story to tell?' Every 
one of you, doubtless, could tell a personal history fully as 
strange as mine, for there is a vast deal of romance in the 
most ordinary lives, and there is no man or woman in the 
most quiet country place in America whose life has not 
been marked by one or another event which has in it all 
the elements of what we call the romantic. These events 
may have occurred in the old farm-house, in the village 
home, in the brown-stone city house, or — as mine — in dis- 
tant countries. My story, stripped of the local interests 
which make it seem strange to American life, is a very 
common story; but I confess that sometimes when I am 
leading this calm and delicious existence of ours in the 
Rookery, I have hard work to realize my personal identity 
with the man whom you, I think, will be surprised to hear 
was once Iskander Effendi, merchant in Jerusalem. You 
know that I am a Hebrew by birth. My father's family 
had lived in England, and he came thence to New York, 
bringing with him all his property. I was brought up as 
an only child. Educated with care and expense, sent 



38 I GO A -FISHING. 

abroad to travel, and indoctrinated thoroughly into the re- 
ligious faith of my ancestors. 

" I was not given to associating with others of my age 
and station, and I passed with such as a somewhat mo- 
rose boy. Yet with books and paintings I made life pass 
on quietly enough, and so I might have lived perhaps till 
I grew old had I not seen and loved a woman. 

" You will not care to know where or how I first saw 

Edith . Some of you remember her. It was the 

one grand secret of my life. I was a young man of ar- 
dent affections, hopeful, cheerful, and I believe I could 
have made her a happy wife. She was very beautiful, and 
they said very gentle and good, and I saw her and I loved 
her. 

" But I never knew her for years. You start. Was it 
strange that I, a Jew, of the race of the despised, should 
have shrunk from exposing myself to her contempt ? No. 
I never approached her — never spoke a word to her. 
Why should I lose the glory of my dream by subjecting 
myself to her pity or her scorn. Why should I risk losing 
the blessedness of loving her by hearing that she had 
called me Alexander the Jew? 

" She was the daughter of wealthy parents. Her posi- 
tion was undoubted. Her circle was not mine, though 
my father's wealth was tenfold that of hers. Though we 
were admitted into all the houses of the wealthy and aris- 
tocratic in America, still we were Jews; and I would not 
have approached that fair girl and subjected myself to 
the glance of her pitying eye for all the wealth of Solomon. 
She was very young, not eighteen, but a perfect woman ; 
and I worshiped her at a distance — how sincerely ! with 
what depth of devotion ! Once, and but once, I was near 
her; for, passing down a New York street one dark 



ISKANDER EFFENDI. 39 

v 

night, in front of her father's door, I saw her carriage 
draw up at the curb, and she descended from it with her 
mother. Just as they stepped out two ruffians set upon 
them, and the elder lady shrieked and fell, while Edith 
sprang proudly back to the side of the carriage, and raised 
her slender arm and fan as if she carried a sword. It 
was but the work of a second to send the villains one into 
the gutter and one half dead against an iron fence. Then 
I left them, unthanked — for I did not wish to be recog- 
nized and remembered. Can you imagine this strange 
feeling ? It was my life. It led my every-day existence. 
For this thought and this only I lived — that I should love 
that beautiful girl, and love her unknown forever. 

" My father died, leaving me wealthy and alone in the 
world. The life I had led had wholly separated me from 
men. I was utterly alone. My father's loss was not felt, 
for I had never loved him. Yet there was a strange in- 
cident in his death which impressed me. He died sud- 
denly, and his last words were very few. ' Philip — you 
are alone — lonesome — my son, you have kindred that you 
know not of — Jerusalem — seek — father's — son — broth- 
er — ' These broken words were his last utterance. 

" I had passed four years of my life in the East with a 
tutor. I know not what longing after human affection 
sent me on the search that was pointed out in my father's 
last words. I gathered that I had kindred somewhere, 
and perhaps he meant to say he or his father had a 
brother of whom I would hear something in Jerusalem. 

" I had nothing to live for in America but Edith — and 
just then Edith was gone. Her mother died, and her fa- 
ther took her away to Europe, and for long travel. 

" I went to seek some one I could love, and that would 
love me. It was a boyish fancy, perhaps, but I sought it 



40 I GO A -FISHING. 

the world over. In Jerusalem I learned nothing. Then 
I came back to England, and sought the old branches of 
the family, but they had gone long ago to Madrid. At 
Madrid I found no traces of them ; but I went thence to 
Tunis, and, after living a year in the latter city of living 
Arabs and dead men's bones, I went by way of the coast 
with a Mograbbin caravan to Cairo and Suez, and down 
the Red Sea to Aden. 

" But why relate further my wanderings. For three years 
I sought kindred — any thing possessing my blood — but 
without success ; and I returned at last to Jerusalem, 
where I resolved to live and die. More than two years I 
had been in the Holy City without setting foot within the 
Christian's great temple, when one morning the Padre 
Antonio, desiring to purchase of me a rare piece of bro- 
cade for an ornamental use in the Latin chapel, took me 
with him to see the spot. I was dealing in silks and jew- 
els then by way of amusement, for I was a lonesome man 
in my habits at Jerusalem, as I had been in America. 
The padre left me alone in the rotunda of the church. 

" I was standing on the Latin side of the Holy Sepul- 
chre, just under the dome, close by the entrance to the 
chapel of the angel. It was almost noon. In ten min- 
utes, at the most, we would hear the thundering clatter on 
the board at the door which implies that the Turk who 
sits in state at the grand entrance is about to go to his 
noonday meal, and the great church is to be closed until 
the hour of vespers. 

"Here and there around the sacred centre were devo- 
tees kneeling in prayer. On the Moor's side an old 
black man — looking, in the face, the very image of my 
grandfather's servant, Neptune, but in dress very different 
— was kneeling at the edge of the inclosing wall of the 



ISKANDER EFFENDI. 4 1 

sepulchre, with his head thrown back, and his face up- 
turned to the blue and serene sky that shone over the 
open dome. As I looked at him, I for the moment for- 
got the place in which I was, and remembered the scenes 
of a long-gone and, perhaps I should add, a long-forgot- 
ten boyhood. 

" I could not, without some awe and reverence, stand 
on the spot that had received so many bended knees and 
penitential tears for fifteen centuries ; and, while that feel- 
ing of awe and reverence was taking possession of me, I 
caught sight of the face of the kneeling Moor, and the 
memory of my old home in America came over me with 
a gush of tenderness, and I felt the tears on my cheek, 
and wiped them away with the silken sleeve of my caftan. 

"Just at that moment I was aware of another person 
kneeling close by my side. This was a female, but her 
face was not visible. She was dressed in the Arab cos- 
tume, and that of the poorer class. A long blue cotton 
gown, without belt, fell from her shoulders, and covered 
her kneeling form ; a head-dress of the same blue stuff 
— which you, perhaps, might call a veil — was over her 
head, and drawn tight around her face. I supposed her 
to be a Christian woman of the city, or possibly from Jaf- 
fa or Kafr-el-Eniab, and I would have taken no further 
notice of her but for the convulsive sobs which shook her 
frame, and which now became painfully audible. 

"The monks and others around paid no attention to 
this. I afterward learned to know that such sobs and ev- 
idences of agony are too common just there to attract 
the attention of any frequenter of the place. Daily many 
hundreds, women mostly, kneel weeping there, as daily 
for a thousand years pilgrims have knelt and wept. But 
I was a stranger, and I did not understand that the 



42 I GO A-FISHING. 

Christian women were moved there very much as our Is- 
raelitish old men are moved at the great temple stones 
where every Friday they meet to pray and lament. 

So I looked at her more earnestly, and, as she sobbed 
more and more, she slightly displaced the cotton garment 
that covered her head and neck, and, standing as I did 
just above her, I saw that she was no Arab woman. 
Her neck was white ; her hair was bound in a knot with 
a chain of gold that flashed among the tresses which 
hung from the bright loop. 

"'This,' I said, 'is no Arab woman. Is she, perhaps, 
Georgian or Circassian ? But, if so, what does she here 
in the church of Christ's resurrection ? For the Georgi- 
ans and Circassians are mostly in Turkish harems. Per- 
haps, then, she is Greek. But why the disguise ? This 
cotton robe is not worn for humility, since it is but the 
covering, and not the substitute for splendor.' 

"And as I stood thus thinking, the thunder of the rap- 
ping on the board at the door resounded through the 
building, and the hundreds of monks, attendants, visitors, 
penitents, and beggars rushed in a mass to the stone of 
unction and the great doorway. 

" The praying woman by my side rose slowly to her 
feet and threw back the veil which she had kept pressed 
against her face. She did not entirely expose her coun- 
tenance, and I could only catch the outline of a rosy 
cheek and the edge of a rounded chin. The act was' 
hasty, as if she was oppressed for breath ; for, as she did 
it, a labored sigh as of pent-up grief escaped her lips, 
and she murmured audibly, ' To-morrow — to-morrow — al- 
ways to-morrow.' 

" As she spoke, she seemed suddenly aware of my pres- 
ence, and the veil fell over her face. 



ISKANDER EFFENDT. 43 

" I had heard her speak four words in good English ; 
for there was no mistaking that English word to-morrow 
for any guttural Arabic word. 

" It was none of my business — this woman's grief, or 
her nationality. Had I met her in the streets of New 
York or Eondon, or even in Paris or Berlin, and she had 
said, ' To-morrow — to-morrow — always to-morrow,' I would 
probably have passed on and forgot her. 

" But to see the outline of such a face under an Arab 
yasmak, and to hear such a voice in English accents 
utter those words in Jerusalem by the Holy Sepulchre, 
was another sort of matter, and I might well be aston- 
ished. She was tall and slender — thus much the dress 
exposed — and she moved with grace ; and while I watched 
her swift steps, she was gone in the crowd, and I was 
alone. 

" I hastened out into the open space before the church, 
but in such a mass of men and women, each woman al- 
most a fac-simile of all the others, how could I hope to 
find her. Withal there was one of the daily battles be- 
tween a Greek and a Latin priest going on in the court, 
and victory long hesitated which of the two to crown, so 
that, by the time I made my way to the little arch that 
leads out by the ruins of the Church of St. John and the 
Hospital of the Knights, all possibility of tracing the un- 
known was lost, and I was left to my imaginations. 

" I sat in the afternoon on the front of my shop in the 
bazaar, smoking and thinking — thinking, doubtless, of the 
face I had seen in the morning and the voice I had heard, 
for why should I not? I was alone in the world — alone 
in Jerusalem — nor living man or woman could claim right 
to challenge my thinking of any beautiful woman I chose 
to occupy myself about. 



44 I GO A -FISHING. 

"The next shop to my own was that of a money- 
changer. You know that the shops of Jerusalem are not 
like our English and American shops. The bazaar is one 
long, narrow street, roofed over and glazed, so that the 
rain never falls on a shop front. The shops are each 
about as large as an ordinary show-window in a Broad- 
way store — say six or seven feet wide and as many deep 
— and the door is but a shutter, hinged at the bottom, 
which falls down, and, standing out in the street, makes 
a little platform in front of the shop on which the mer- 
chant sits ; so that the bazaar is lined with a row of mer- 
chants on each side, sitting only a few feet apart, and 
each one can reach all the contents of his shelves almost 
without rising from his seat, and can light the pipe of his 
opposite neighbor without moving. 

" A camel heavily laden was coming down the bazaar, 
and had reached the point nearly in front of me, when a 
horseman, followed by ten or a dozen others, came up 
from the street of David. It was manifest that one or the 
other must turn back, for there was not room for the horse- 
men to pass. The leader of the party was a young man, 
dressed in the gorgeous style of the Lebanon Druses. No 
one could doubt that he was a prince of that proud and 
strange race, and the haughty style in which he shouted 
to the Arab camel driver only made the surmise more 
sure. 

" But the Arab was from the Jordan Ghor, and Arabs 
of that neighborhood seldom give way to mortal man. It 
therefore seemed that the horseman would be ignomini- 
ously overturned, to his own confusion and the imminent 
danger of my shop and wares, for the Ishmaelite came on 
without a pause, his huge camel swinging now to the right 
and now to the left, his heavy load of the drift-wood of 



ISKANDER EFFENDI. 45 

the Dead Sea threatening to carry away the very sides of 
the bazaar. 

" The horseman reined up, or rather spoke to his horse, 
who, like a true desert mare, stopped as if she were sud- 
denly turned to a statue. Again he shouted to the Arab, 
who hung lounging over the neck of his camel with an 
appearance of nonchalance or stupidity that might well 
have imposed on a stranger to Arab customs, but with his 
keen black eye flashing from under the shawl that hung 
over his head. The horseman was no stranger. The 
next instant he uttered the sharp hiss that camels under- 
stand, and with the utterance mingled the report of his 
pistol. The camel paused with uplifted foot. The Arab 
fell under the foot as it came down, the huge, spongy mass 
rolling him over, but not crushing him. 

" ' He is dead,' I exclaimed involuntarily in English. 

" ' Only frightened,' said the Druse, in as good English 
as mine ; and, turning to his attendants, he uttered some 
words of command which sufficed to clear the way before 
him in a few seconds, and they were gone, leaving the 
Arab lying in the gutter which runs along the middle of 
the streets in Jerusalem, instead of at the sides as in other 
cities. 

" English again ! and this time from a Druse ; and good 
sounding English, with a hearty smack of familiarity about 
it which left no doubt that the speaker had used that 
tongue from his childhood. Only two words, but enough 
for my brain to work upon, and so I pondered till the sun 
went down, and then I walked on the wall above the Zion 
Gate, and thought on the matter. For all this made up a 
startling subject of thought for a Jew in Jerusalem. 

" Meantime the Arab had picked himself out of the gut- 
ter. For Mohammedan or Jew durst not touch a man 



46 I GO A -FISHING. 

supposed to be shot by a Druse, and he might have lain 
there and bled to death, for aught they dared do till some 
Turkish officer had passed an opinion on him. I was just 
getting off my shop front to go to his assistance, but he 
had found leisure to recover his scattered brains, and rose 
to his feet. Finding no bullet-hole in his body, to his 
evident astonishment, he went to seek his wandering cam- 
el down the nearest cross street, and then came back by 
our way. 

" Achmed Haraga, the money - changer next me, ex- 
changed a word with him as he came along, and a sign 
that spoke more than words. I had learned that sign in 
Bagdad, and I knew what it meant. If I had time I 
would tell you how I learned it. 

" I walked on the wall over Mount Zion, and thought 
of the woman I had seen by the Sepulchre. There was 
something very home-like about that English voice. It 
reminded me of my mother. Did I tell you that my 
mother was a Christian woman ? She was the daughter 
of — no matter who — but she was a gentle, beautiful girl ; 
and because she married my father they turned her out 
of house and home, and cursed her at the fireside where 
her mother had prayed. Her mother, thank God, was 
dead. I think that, but for the memory of the Christian 
treatment her family gave her, I might by her gentle in- 
fluences have been a Christian. But I never forgot that 
curse. My mother died when I was young. I remem-* 
bered her face, its exceeding tenderness and beauty, and 
somehow the voice of the weeping woman brought back 
to me that beloved countenance. ' To-morrow,' I said. 
' Well, I will go to-morrow to the Sepulchre again, and per- 
haps I shall see her there ;' and, content with that, I went 
my way homeward by the street of the Armenians. 



ISKANDER EFFENDI. 47 

"There is a dark archway through which the street 
passes under the convent. I had no lantern in my hand, 
and this was a violation of the Turkish rule. It was not 
surprising, therefore, that as I passed the door of the 
convent under the arch two of the soldiers of the pasha 
should seize me, and demand why I was out alone with- 
out a lantern. I replied that I was an American. They 
thought my Arabic too good for that, or pretended so to 
think, and — and — the result was that I had to be rough. 
I had some skill in that line ; my early education was 
not neglected. They shouted for help, and several sol- 
diers were on me in a twinkling. Imagine my surprise, 
however, when I found myself standing with my back to 
the convent wall, and not alone in my position of de- 
fense. Another man, whose features were wholly invisi- 
ble in the dark, was as hearty as I in the business of 
our defense ; and, as the melee was altogether too thick 
for the use of fire-arms, we soon found ourselves fully 
equal to the task of keeping at bay the entire lot of Mos- 
lem soldiers. 

" ' How long is this to last, however ?' I asked in Ara- 
bic, after we had kept them off about five minutes by 
putting six or eight of them wholly out of the combat. 

" ' No longer than we like it,' said my ally, very coolly. 
' For my part, I rather enjoy the fun of the thing ; but, if 
you say so, we'll have help,' and, without waiting my re- 
ply, he blew a shrill whistle that rang down the street 
toward the Tower of David, and a troop of horse came up 
the pavement at a gallop. 

" ' Sweep out the archway,' was the ringing order given 
by my companion, and the next instant the soldiers of 
the pasha were scattered like chaff, and we were at lib- 
erty. The good Armenians had long ago bolted and 



48 I GO A -FISHING. 

barred their convent doors against Jew, Turk, and infidel, 
as is their custom when either is likely to demand their 
services. So we were left to ourselves, and when the 
troop returned my valiant defender mounted me by his 
side, and we went at a rattling pace down the hill from 
the Jaffa gate and up the sharp winding passage that 
leads south to the gate of the Mograbbins. And here 
we passed near my own house, and I asked my brave 
friend to pause, and let me thank him for his aid. But 
he declined briefly, saying the city would probably be 
too hot for him to-night. 

" ' But shall I not see you again at all, to thank you?' 

" ' Thanks are not needed. I did but my duty. But 
stay — you live in this quarter ? Then you are a Jew. We 
are both bound to enmity against this accursed govern- 
ment. I must hasten now, but I will see you again. 
Which is your house? To-morrow night at this hour I 
will be there — Sebulkeer ; ' — and he was gone. What nec- 
romancy was it that a minute later made the gate of 
the Mograbbins clang heavily as it closed — that gate 
least often opened in the daytime of any gate of Jeru- 
salem, and always shut at night as firmly as if sealed 
with the seal of Solomon ? 

"Before noon of the next day I was on watch in the 
Church of the Sepulchre ; but I watched in vain for the 
blue gown. There were hundreds of that color; but the 
form and step I looked for were absent. 

As I stood near the door of the Sepulchre, looking 
eagerly toward the stone of unction, I became suddenly 
aware of a conversation carried on in English within 
the Chapel of the Angel. It was in low tones ; but I 
was standing directly in front of the small hole in the 
wall through which the Greek priests are accustomed to 



ISKANDER EFFENDI. 49 

pass out the holy fire on Easter-day, and the persons 
within doubtless took no note of the existence of such 
an outlet. They supposed themselves alone, and, having 
full view of the doorway, imagined that no one was with- 
in hearing. For you will bear in mind that the Chapel 
of the Angel is a little chapel in front of the Sepulchre, 
on the floor of the church, under the great dome. 

" ' My daughter,' said in Arabic a voice of singular 
melody ; ' my daughter, your grief seems very heavy — ' 

"'I do not understand Arabic,' interrupted a female 
voice in Italian. 

" ' I said,' replied the man, in Italian, ' that your grief 
is very heavy. Can the Church do nothing to console 
you ?' 

" ' I do not speak Italian well enough to converse in 
it ; my language is English,' was the reply. 

"Then followed a few sentences in a low tone which 
I could not hear — which, indeed, I did not try to hear, 
for what had I to do with them? and then I heard an 
exclamation of joy — '. Selim, Selim ! at last, at last !' — and 
I remembered the voice. 

" ' Where, where have you wandered ? Every day for a 
year and more I have been on this spot at noon, and you 
came not; though when we parted you said we should 
meet here to-morrow.' 

" ' I have been a fugitive. Yesterday was the first day 
I have been able to enter Jerusalem, and last night I 
was again compelled to assume a disguise. But all is 
over. We will not part again.' 

"'Thank God! thank God !' 

" That voice ! that voice ! It had now haunted me 
four-and-twenty hours. I had made it the business of 
my life for those hours ; had built up the fabrics of ten ; 

D 






50 I GO A-FISHING. 

twenty, a hundred lives on that voice. I had thought, 
fancied, dreamed about it, until I had some sort of no- 
tion that I had property in it. And this priest was the 
robber of what I had, it seemed to me, possessed a life- 
time. And I was strangely moved when I heard him 
repeat tenderly, 'Darling, it is all over now; we will not 
part again.' 

" They came out together and passed me, neither one 
noticing my presence. He wore the dress of a Greek 
priest. They marry wives ; so there was nothing very 
strange about this meeting. She was dressed in the or- 
dinary black-silk bag of a wealthy Oriental lady, and the 
waddle which her loose shoes made necessary was the 
remotest possible resemblance to the graceful step of the 
day previous. 

" I followed them to the doorway, the street, down by 
the Mediterranean Hotel, across the street of David, and 
just there he turned and left her. While I looked at 
him she was gone, and I lost them both in the crowd. 
I had no object in following either. My little romance 
of twenty-four hours was over, and I had seen the begin- 
ning and end of it. 

" I went to my shop and sold silks till the sun set, and 
then home, to sit by the doorway and dream. 

" How much I dreamed in those long years of Eastern 
life. I dreamed the sunniest dreams — of bright coun- 
tries, rich with olives and pomegranates, and palms bear-' 
ing dates of Ibreem ! I dreamed that night of my old 
home in America. I heard the wind in the tree over 
the gate. I heard the quail whistling in the corn-field 
down the valley. I heard the dash of the water over the 
little mill-dam in the ravine. I heard the voice of my 
father, stern, calm, not affectionate, but always kind. I 



ISKANDER EFFENDI. 5 I 

heard most of all the voice of my Christian mother, pray- 
ing alone, as she was accustomed to pray; for my father 
forbade her praying with me, and that I believe killed 
her. Many a time I had wondered whether there was 
not something in that religion of my gentle mother, and 
now it came over me with a hitherto unknown force. I 
knew the Christian story well. Every word of it I had 
read over and over in former years, for my mother's 
prayers were not prayers to be overheard and forgotten ; 
and now, as the sunlight faded above Jerusalem, I re- 
membered the story of the Passion, and, recalling all its 
touching mournfulness, I bowed my head. 

" ' Iskander the Jew is sorrowful to-night.' 

" It was my rescuer of the night previous. He was 
alone, and would pause now but a moment. 

" ' I saw you in the bazaar yesterday,' he said. 

" ' But I saw you not' 

" ' You do not recognize a Druse without his head- 
dress.' 

" I started to my feet. He smiled, and went on 
quietly. 

" ' You speak English. I heard you when I shot at 
the scoundrelly Bedouin.' 

" ' And you replied in English.' 

" ' Very true. We will drop the Arabic then, and use 
the vernacular, especially as we may be overheard. You 
are an American.' 

" ' How know you that ?' 

" ' Because no Englishman could do the Oriental as 
you have, and more especially because of our last night's 
experience. I am from New York myself, long ago; 
you ?' 

" ' From the same city.' 



52 I GO A -FISHING. 

" ' We are fellow-countrymen, as I supposed last night ; 
and now will you do me a service ? One must ask 
strange things at times. There is a lady in the case, too. 
Will you give house-room to one in whom I have a deep 
interest ? You have women about your house, I suppose. 
Your porter has a wife or two, if he's a Moslem — one, at 
least, if he's a Jew — I am right? Yes; and will you 
then let me bring her here for a little while ? She will 
not disturb your quiet. I will say nothing about paying 
board just now; for I think you understand that I am 
not of the kind likely to ask a service and leave it unre- 
warded, nor do I think you are one to ask or receive re- 
ward for hospitality.' 

"It was a very sudden thing; but in ten minutes it 
was arranged, and in ten more the lady, closely veiled, 
was in my house. The house was built around a court- 
yard. The rooms on each side were reached only by 
steps descending into the court. She had one side of 
the house, and Hebrew women-servants were engaged for 
her. When she was at length in possession of her rooms, 
he came to me and said quietly, ' Will you see her ?' 

" I followed him to the harem. Little did I dream of 
what awaited me. When I reached the room, I found 
before me, radiant in all her splendid beauty, the lady of 
the church — such I knew her by the dress and chain of 
gold — and the lady was Edith ! 

" I was calm. When was I ever otherwise ? She did 
not recognize me. Why should she? She thanked me 
for the hospitality, and I replied briefly, and retired to 
my seat in the gateway, where, a little later, he left me, 
pressing my hand and uttering that word which all Orient- 
als understand as meaning, 'I trust you as I trust my God.' 

" How faithfully I kept that trust ! At first life seemed 



ISKANDER EFFENDI. 53 

terrible to me. To have her in my house all day and 
night, unseen, unapproached, to know that she loved an- 
other, to half suspect that she was not true even to him, 
to spend my days in watching the churches and bazaars 
for the priest, my nights in imagining her story, of which 
I knew no word — this was very hard. Daily the young 
man, known to me only as Selim Bey, as I was known to 
him only as Iskander, came to the house and went in to 
her apartments. Daily he paused and talked with me a 
little while, until he said, one day, ' Iskander, I shall be 
absent now some days. Go in and see Edith once in a 
while : she will be lonelv.' 

" I must pass along now rapidly with my story. I did 
see her. I never saw woman half so lovely. At first I 
but spoke with her at the doorway of her rooms in the 
evening and the morning. Then I persuaded her to walk 
out with me. First we climbed the wall on Mount Zion; 
then we rambled around the city. Now we walked down 
the Valley of Jehoshaphat, now ascended the sunny slopes 
of Olivet. Sometimes we walked as far as Bethany. Once 
we went on horseback to Bethlehem. All this time she 
wound around me the delicious bonds of love. 

" I know not that I should say any thing of myself, 
but I may at least assert that I was not a man to despise 
either for physical or mental reasons. I was young and 
strong. I had studied much, read much, traveled much. 
There were few subjects of ordinary conversation in such 
a country with which I was not familiar, and she needed 
no other guide about the Holy City. And while I named 
all the places, she told me all the thrilling Christian his- 
tories that cling to them. 

" A month glided by. It was the month of May, most 
delicious of all the year in Jerusalem. 



54 I GO A -FISHING. 

" One day I was sitting on the front of my shop, in that 
listless way that had now come over me, wrapped in the 
consciousness of present enjoyment, and diligently keep- 
ing out of my brain the bitter truth that I was dreaming 
of a delight that was to end suddenly and forever when 
Selim should return. I was as happy as man could be. 
I had thoroughly adapted myself to the Oriental fatalism, 
content with the present though the next moment should 
bring destruction. 

"Thus indulging my fancy, I sat with my eyes half 
closed, and Achmed Haraga, the money-changer, might 
well have thought me sleeping. Nor, indeed, did I my- 
self see the Bedouin, who, gliding by me, entered into a 
conversation with the man of gold and silver, until sud- 
denly my ear caught the name of Selim Bey. Then I 
listened. 

" ' He will come by the well of Birreh. We will not 
fail. The sons of Ibrahim never forget. But the arms 
we must have.' 

" ' You shall have them to-night at the Damascus gate. 
But the bracelets must be here to-day.' 

" ' They are here.' 

" And the Arab produced a small package of heavy 
gold bracelets, such as the Orientals are accustomed to 
make rudely out of coin as a convenient means of invest- 
ment. When they desire money for use, the bracelets 
pass with the money-changers for their gold value. 

" Khalifah, the Bedouin, had been made the messenger 
of his tribe to negotiate a purchase of arms ; and, from the 
circumstances, I could not doubt that they were to be 
used in an attack on Selim, doubtless in revenge for the 
ignominious overthrow of the Arab in the bazaar; for the 
man was the same. 



ISKANDER EFFENDI. 55 

" My resolution was taken at once. 

" I closed my shop, and, hastening home, inquired of 
Edith when she expected Selim. He was to return the 
next day. I must be at the well of Birreh, then, in the 
morning, and watch for him to the northward on the road 
to Galilee. I had not been living thus long in Jerusalem 
without providing for myself the means of assistance in 
just such cases as this. For in the East we were liable 
at any moment to need the strongest personal defenses; 
and among my household goods I had a store of arms, 
while among my acquaintances were men I could depend 
on for such emergencies. But the time was brief. 

" Near Bir Ayoub, on the Jaffa road, I once found an 
Arab in distress, and succored him. No matter now for 
the particulars. He was one of the men of Abu Goash, 
the robber-chief. My man and his family were bound 
to me by the Eastern laws of gratitude. Seven stout men 
with horses I could count on from among them, and to 
them I dispatched a messenger before the gates of Jeru- 
salem were shut at sunset. They would have no diffi- 
culty in reaching the appointed place of meeting by day- 
break in the morning. I myself with one of my servants 
mounted and left the city in the night, carrying about us 
enough of the Frankish weapons to arm our expected 
band. I had a perfect arsenal of revolvers in my belt 
and shawl, and Mousa, my man, carried as many. We 
rode northward by the starlight, picking our dangerous 
way among the rocks; for there are no roads in Syria, 
and night travel is next to impossible. You know them 
well, Effendi. The moon rose a little before the dawn, 
and by its deceptive light we passed the well of Birreh, 
and the great fields of rocks that lie around the site of 
Bethel of old. In the olive-groves near Ain Haramieh 



56 I GO A- FISHING. 

we paused, and as the day was breaking we met my ex- 
pected allies — ten swarthy sons of Ishmael, mounted on 
mares of pure blood, ready for any service that I might 
require of man or beast. I waited here, trusting to inter- 
cept my friend, who would come from Nablous by this 
route. How many men he might have with him I could 
not guess ; but Edith thought it improbable that he would 
bring more than one attendant. 

" As the day came up, and I waited by the side of the 
way, I confess to you that for the first time a terrible 
thought came to me. What was this half Druse, half 
American, to me, that I should risk my life for his ? Were 
he out of the way, might not Edith the beautiful be mine ? 
I never heard her name him with the tone that one uses 
in speaking of an absent lover. Did she love him so 
much, after all ? Who then was the Greek priest ? what 
was this mystery ? I had scarcely asked myself the ques- 
tion before. I had been listless, stupid, Oriental in my 
ways of thinking. Edith was after all as likely to be 
mine as to be his or the Greek priest's. 

" Hours glided along, and we waited under the olive- 
trees, and I thought thus a hundred wild thoughts. The 
tempter was with me, and might have triumphed but for 
a sudden interruption. 

" A volley of fire-arms sounded in the valley below. 
We sprang to the saddle, and dashed down the road at 
a furious gallop. The scene at the foot of the hill ex- 
plained itself. The attack that was planned for the well 
of Birreh had been for some reason changed to the Har- 
amieh fountain, and, as we reached the foot of the hill, 
we found Selim standing with his back to the bank at 
the side of the horse-path, beset by full a score of Arabs, 
whose volley had killed his two companions. 



ISKANDER EFFENDI. 57 

" The young American was ready to sell his life dearly. 
He had fired his revolver twice with fatal precision, but, 
as the enemy approached him, he had drawn his short 
yataghan, and, with the strength and skill of an accom- 
plished swordsman, was keeping off the heads of a dozen 
lances that were seeking his breast. How easily at that 
instant I might have been left alone to protect Edith the 
beautiful ! But I did not pause. We descended on the 
Arab horde like a thunderbolt. Seven saddles were 
empty before we closed with them, and then the contest 
was brief and decisive. Five of the Oulad Ibrahim fled 
across the hill, and a ball from my revolver lamed for- 
ever the horse on which the last one rode. 

"But the Druse chieftain was not where I had found 
him. He lay on the ground, bleeding from a ghastly 
wound. As I sprang to his side he murmured, the words 
gurgling in blood, 'Lift me, Iskander — gently. It's all 
up with me.' 

" I lifted him with one arm around his shoulders. His 
head fell on my breast, but he revived a little at the 
change in his position. We made a litter of branches, 
and carried him gently to Birreh. I had sent a messen- 
ger for Edith, and she arrived at the huts by the well just 
as we brought him there. We carried him into the cov- 
ered house, the pilgrim's resting-place by the well, and 
made him as comfortable as we could; but life was fast 
ebbing away, and when the evening approached he was 
dying. 

"Edith sat by him, Edith the beautiful — how beauti- 
ful ! There was no wild emotion of grief in the dear 
girl. She sat down by his side as the wife of a chieftain 
of Mount Lebanon should, and tenderly cared for him 
with tearless eyes. 



58 I GO A -FISHING. 

" At length, as I sat holding his head on my breast, 
he turned his face so as to look up into my eyes. His 
gaze was long and steadfast, as if his soul would pierce 
my own. Then he spoke slowly, painfully, in Arabic. 

"'Thy face has all the tenderness of the face that 
comes to me in dreams. Her face — so heavenly !' 

Ali Benhammed, my Arab friend, stood looking at us, 
and, as the features of the dying chief lay close to mine, 
uttered an exclamation of astonishment. The other 
Arabs crowding around said aloud, ' They are brothers !' 

" ' Iskander Effendi,' said Ali to me, ' is the Druse your 
brother ?' 

"There was something in the question that startled 
me. 

" ' Selim, who was your father,' I said. 

" ' Why seek to know, Iskander ? Even Edith never 
knew.' 

" ' Because my father was a Hebrew, and my mother 
a Christian, and they have told me that my younger 
brother died.' 

" ' Allah ! can this be !' he exclaimed, trembling so 
that Edith, who did not understand us, for we talked in 
Arabic, sprang to his side, fearing that this was the death- 
struggle. But it was not yet the hour of parting. I had 
found my kindred; for Selim the Druse was verily my 
brother ! Found him for one hour — one hour — and after 
that, where should we meet again ? In the Jerusalem of 
Abraham and Isaac and Jacob, or never again ? 

" The story was told slowly in broken accents, and 
Edith and I listened all the night, wiping his lips and 
begging him to rest. But he would tell it, and we heard 
it all. Briefly, all that concerns you to know was this : 

" Between our father and mother was made an agree- 



ISKANDER EFFENDI. 59 

ment, of which I never heard until I now learned it from 
my brother. It was that their children should be edu- 
cated alternately in the faith of the father and the moth- 
er. The first child was to be educated by the father, 
and this was duly carried out with me. But when the 
second child was born, the father caused the mother to 
believe that it survived only a few hours, while he, in fact, 
conveyed the babe to his friends in a distant city, where 
he was brought up in ignorance of his parentage, and in 
the Hebrew faith. 

"The guardian of the boy was abundantly supplied 
with money, and was instructed to spare no expense in 
his education. He finally brought him to Jerusalem, 
where, in the midst of the impressive scenes that sur- 
rounded him, and in the presence of his father, the story 
of his birth was revealed. He was a boy of spirit, and 
the history had not the effect that was anticipated. His 
soul revolted at it. He disowned his father, ran away 
from his guardian, and sought to escape the bitterness 
of his own anger by leading the life of an adventurer in 
the East. Chance threw him among the Druses, and he 
became one of them. His education and skill soon en- 
abled him to control the fiery race of the followers of 
El-Hakim, and he became an Emir. Several years had 
passed, and he was engaged in plots for the overthrow 
of the Turkish power in the entire pashalic of Damas- 
cus. He was the head of the conspiracy. Its branches 
extended from Alexandria to Aleppo. Three years pre- 
viously he had rescued from the hands of an attacking 
party of Bedouins a little group of travelers. An old 
man and his daughter were among them — Americans — 
who were traveling, with two Englishmen in the party. 
The fright rendered the old man helpless, and the Druse 



60 I GO A- FISHING. 

chief took him on a litter to his own house in the Leb- 
anon hills. I might have said his palace, for such it was. 
For six months the father lingered in the Druse fastness, 
and during that time his daughter won the heart of the 
Druse chieftain ; then the father died, and the daughter 
was left in his home. They were married after the Druse 
fashion; but she was of American faith, and the cere- 
mony, though she yielded to it at the time, never seemed 
to her a valid marriage, and she pined at the thought of 
her dishonor. Then he carried her to Jerusalem, that 
they might be married there by the English bishop; but 
when he was arranging it, sudden flight became neces- 
sary. He promised to meet her at the Sepulchre the 
next day at noon in disguise, and with this hasty prom- 
ise he left her alone in the Holy City. For a year he 
dared not approach her, remaining among his mountain 
warriors, while she was shut up in the house of an Arab 
woman, visiting only the Church of the Sepulchre daily, 
to watch and weep and pray. He met her there at last, 
disguised as a priest, in the Chapel of the Angel, and 
that night they were married by the English prelate. 
Then he placed her in my charge, and then followed the 
events already known. 

" And so I had found my kindred. I was not alone 
now. 

" ' I thank God for this, Iskander. I have not thanked 
God before since — since — Iskander, thou art of the 
faith of our father ?' 

" ' Nay, Selim ; I think I could be a Christian since I 
have known thy wife Edith. The curse of my mother's 
father made me hate the Christian faith. So the sin of 
my father has well nigh won me to it by sending her to 
me. Our mother was an angel of God, Selim.' 



ISKANDER EFFENDI. 6 1 

" Edith knelt by his side and whispered — 

" ' And thou, Selim ?' 

" ' I almost believe in thy words, dear one. I have 
wandered far from the dear old land. I have long for- 
gotten all faith. But thou hast almost won me. Speak 
to me of the Son of Mary.' 

" So she spoke gently in low accents of singular melody 
— telling us all the story of the Passion and the Exaltation. 
And Selim, lying on the ground at Beitin — even where 
his father Jacob lay of old — by the same spring that 
soothed the sleep of Israel, saw, as his father saw, the 
heavens opened, and angels ascending and descending. 
And the face of Edith was the holiest of all, as she knelt 
by his side and prayed. 

" Effendi, I believe that the prayers were heard. Doubt- 
less the smile of joy that stole over his face as the dawn 
came into the east was the answer of our God, the God 
of Jacob. When the sun was rising over the hills of 
Moab, he stretched his right hand out, and threw it over 
Edith's neck, and drew her down to him, and pressed his 
lips to hers in a long kiss, and then I received her in my 
arms as she fell back from his dead embrace. 

" We buried him under the wall of Jerusalem, outside 
the Zion gate, where the Christian dead are congregated. 
Edith and I prayed at the Sepulchre together that after- 
noon. 

" I closed my shop in the bazaar, sold my silks to the 
merchants, and with Edith came to America. I am grow- 
ing old. Edith is dead. Her child, whom you remember, 
is lying yonder under the pine-tree. All that I have loved 
best is gone out of this world. But you know me well 
enough to know that I am not a gloomy man, though very 
lonesome and surrounded by many sad recollections. 



62 I GO A- FISHING. 

Sometimes I am heavily oppressed with the weight of all 
that I have seen and suffered, and when the load grows 
too heavy, I leave my city home and come here to go 
a-fishing. So I grow calm, patient, and content. So, 
Effendi, it grows to be well with me — it is peace. 

" ' Salaam aleikoum Ya Effendi !' 

"' Es salamak Ya Braheem.' " 

And peace was with us all that night. 



IV. 

MORNING TROUT; EVENING TALK. 

Early next morning I was out to breathe the air. 
There had been a shower in the night, but the sun rose 
clear, and I saw the first rays that found their way down 
into the valley. The drops of last night's moisture yet 
remaining on the leaves sparkled and shone like dia- 
monds. There was a flock of young goslings in the pond 
when I approached it, and they seemed to enjoy the sun- 
shine keenly. I fancy they had never seen it but two or 
three mornings before, and it might well astonish them. 

Think of it ! Suppose, my friend, that you had never 
seen the sunshine but twice or three times in your life, 
with what splendor would the great day king roll up the 
eastern sky for you; with what glory would the heavens 
be filled ; with what unutterable magnificence would he 
go down the west; and in what wondering awe, and si- 
lent, voiceless astonishment would he leave you in the 
still and solemn twilight ! Is the sunshine any less grand, 
or the sun's pathway any less glorious, or the day's de- 
cline any less stately, in fact, than it would be if you had 
been born in a cavern, and had never seen the daylight 
till to-day ? 

Why, then, is it so commonplace ? 

" Because you are used to it, and have seen enough of 
it." Is that your answer ? 



64 I GO A- FISHING. 

Man, there will come an hour when, as a just punish- 
ment for that hackneyism of soul that you permit and are 
proud of, God will shut out the glories of his world from 
your vision, and, in the gathering gloom that shall then 
thicken around you, you will cry out for light ; but the 
broad glare of the noonday sun shall not then prevail to 
pierce the shadows. 

I was speaking of the goslings. They shook their tiny 
wings in the first sunlight, and poked their bills less fre- 
quently under them, and moved about with more freedom 
as I was approaching the pond, when suddenly I saw 
them rush in confusion hither and thither, and so great 
was their consternation that I did not miss one of them 
that had disappeared under the water. But a moment 
later, a mink stole out of the water at the upper end of 
the pond, and before I could throw a stone at him, almost 
before I could shout, he disappeared in the wood with a 
youngster in his felonious jaws. 

" Never mind," said Philip, approaching while I was 
staring after the wretch — " never mind ; the gosling would 
only have lived to be a goose." 

" It isn't the loss of a gosling, but the audacity of the 
thief. I can't bear such impertinence." 

" What are you going to do about it ?" 

"Take a ride and think of it." 

" Agreed. But not till we have had breakfast." 

The black ponies were before the light spring wagon, 
and Philip, with Dr. Johnston, drove, while John and my- 
self went in the saddle. Under the seat of the wagon 
were carefully stowed the rods and a fowling-piece ; for 
it is a safe rule that a sportsman pursues — never to be 
without his tools when there is even a bare possibility that 
he may want them. 



SQUIRREL SHOOTING. 65 

Down the glen-shaded lane die wagon rattled, and we 
brought up the rear at a gallop, which soon exhilarated 
us, and as we turned into the road we flew by the wagon, 
and led up the long hill through the forest. The road 
was in a capital condition. The shower had not left a 
drop of standing water. Even the horses seemed to ap- 
preciate the freshness of the air and the purity of the 
morning. As we crossed the hill-top, John caught sight 
of a gray squirrel in the road, and with a shout dashed 
off after him. The quick fellow was as fast as six horses, 
and was up an oak-tree before the gray had made his 
third leap. The wagon was close behind, and John sprang 
to the ground, and, throwing his rein to Philip, seized the 
gun, and called me to help him " surround the squirrel." 

There is no " season " for squirrel shooting. Enemies 
to the farmer, they are to be regarded as fair game in 
spring, summer, or autumn. " Surrounding" a gray squir- 
rel is one of the most exciting of forest sports. The game 
is small, but the fun is always large. I have had as much 
exhilaration, excitement, and fatigue in a gray - squirrel 
hunt as in any bear or wolf hunt it was ever my fortune 
to join. I rode around the tree half a dozen times, while 
John stood watching to catch a whisk of the squirrel's 
tail or the slightest motion of his body. But he was en- 
sconced in some crotch or cavity of the limbs, and would 
not stir. At length I dismounted, and, taking a large 
stone, commenced hammering on the trunk. It would 
seem as if these fellows were used to having their trees 
cut down, and themselves caught in that way, for gener- 
ally, when they hear a sound and feel a trembling that re- 
sembles the blows of an axe, they hasten to evacuate ; 
and so this one, when I began to pound, started for the 
next tree, and was stopped in the air by the load of shot 

E 



66 I GO A -FISHING. 

which John sent after him. He fell fifty feet in a sheer 
fall, and struck the ground with a sound like a falling 
stone. Used to their proceedings, John sprang for him, 
but he was not there. Quick as a flash, he was up the 
next tree, and the second load of shot rattled into the 
trunk as his gray tail whisked around the other side of it, 
and he went up into leafy obscurity. 

While John loaded, I laughed ; and now mounting 
again, I rode around among the trees, and at length caught 
sight of the squirrel, apparently sky-gazing, among the 
leaves on the extreme topmost branch of the tree, quite 
out of reach of shot. How to dislodge him was the ques- 
tion, for, as to mounting the tree, neither of us would think 
of it ; and while we took breath and cogitated, Simmons, 
shoe-maker at the cross-roads, came trudging up the road, 
with his rifle on his shoulder, bound on a hunt. Of him 
John borrowed the weapon that had been for so many 
years familiar to his hands, and with a light toss and a 
quick sight he shot. The squirrel came down, plunging 
through the leaves of the tree, and by limbs where, had he 
been living, he would have caught and held on, and 
struck the ground close by my horse, who sprang into the 
air and kept me occupied in quieting him till John had 
placed his gun and game in the wagon, and was mounted 
by my side. 

Then we dashed off and down the hill-side, still through 
forest, pausing now and then to gather flowers or to rest* 
in cool, deep shades, and once to drink of a spring that 
trickled from the bank, clear and cold. 

Passing across the plain, we paused at the gate of a 
house which stood under a large oak-tree, to inquire after 
the health of an old man, the oldest man in the neighbor- 
hood, whose years were well-nigh exhausted. They told 



COUNTRY SADNESS. 67 

us sadly that he was no better. They need not have told 
us. There was a look about the place which said the 
same before we saw them. There is always a something 
about the country that indicates the sadness or happiness 
of the country folk. The first sound that we heard on 
approaching was the creak of the well-pole, and it was a 
mournful sound, different from its usual tone of cheer ; 
for there is music in that creaking pole when swiftly han- 
dled. Then we heard a gate swinging, and the rattle of 
the chain, and there was something unusually sad about 
that. There was a flock of geese on the road near the 
house, and they were all silent as we passed; and the old 
turkey on the wall looked and stretched his head out, and 
his long, red neck was glistening in the sun, but he uttered 
none of his accustomed exclamations of pride. The shut- 
ters of the old windows were closed. There was not one 
open on all the end of the house toward the road. In 
short, there was an indescribable something about the 
place which you who have lived in the country will un- 
derstand, and which you who have never lived there can 
not be made to understand, which indicated that those in 
the house were in deep affliction of some sort, either bid- 
ding adieu to one who was going, or looking at the vacant 
place of one who had gone. 

We did not go in, but remained at the gate while the 
Doctor entered, bearing the kind wishes of all our party ; 
and as we drove on afterward we were somewhat sad- 
dened by his description of the wan features and long 
white hair of the good old man, who was so soon to depart 
from the scenes that he had loved for eighty years. 

And now with a short turn we left the road, and entered 
a forest that is almost like an oak opening of prairie land. 
Here we rested, and, leaving the horses, strolled down the 



68 I GO A -FISHING. 

hill in the deep shade to a spot of more sylvan beauty 
than I can describe. 

Here the trees are very lofty, growing from rich, deep 
soil. There are no branches on them for fifty feet, and at 
that height or a greater they interlace their branches, 
and what sunshine comes through comes feloniously, and 
steals down as if half fearful of being driven out. A trav- 
eling stream, a cool, merry child of the hills and woods, 
comes dashing down the side of the hill over a rocky bed, 
and, leaping at last with a bound of delight into a moss- 
edged basin where the small trout congregate, and where 
sometimes a larger one is found, escapes over a bed of 
clean gravel into the waters of a lake lying among the 
hills, and abounding in trout of two varieties. The largest 
variety is the lake trout, so called by most sportsmen; 
and in this lake one has been taken weighing a trifle over 
thirty pounds. The ordinary brook trout is also found 
there in plenty ; but I had never seen one taken from the 
lake which weighed over a pound and three quarters. 

Before we descended the slope to the basin of the 
brook Dr. Johnston put his rod together, and adjusted a 
cast of flies. The water in the basin was as clear as 
crystal, not more than six feet deep, and there was no 
bush to cover the approach. Neither was a long cast 
practicable among the trees. It was therefore a scene 
to laugh at as the learned Doctor descended the slope, 
with his head bowed down as low as his rotundity of 
body would permit, and at length progressed on hands 
and knees until within a rod of the edge of the basin. 
Here he raised his head cautiously till he could see the 
surface of the shining water, and, holding his rod in the 
right hand and his line in the left, bent the spring back, 
and let it fly off with the line and leader and flies in the 



he's a whale. 69 

air, then, with just the most delicate twist of his wrist, 
laid the flies on the farther side of the basin, and drew 
them over the glassy water. A rise, a sharp strike, and 
— it will happen to the best of anglers, sometimes — a 
small chub had risen to the fly, and the short sharp 
stroke lifted him like a shot into the air. He went over 
the Doctor's head, and twenty feet behind him into a 
low pine-bush, where the leader was effectually entan- 
gled. So the Doctor crawled up the slope, disengaged 
his leader, returned to the old spot, and three times sent 
his flies by that graceful cast over the basin. Then, in- 
stead of lifting the line, he threw a wave into it from the 
end of the slender rod, and as the wave ran along it lift- 
ed the flies and laid them down again out of his sight, 
but under the very edge of the bank at the side of the 
brook-fall. He did not, but we from the top of the slop- 
ing ground did, see the magnificent rise with which the 
tail fly was seized; but he felt it, and was on his feet in 
an instant. Once around the basin went the sharp cut 
of the line through the water, and then like lightning the 
fish rushed out over the gravel into the lake. There the 
Doctor saw him, as we did not. " He's a whale," I 
heard him mutter, as he pressed his finger on the line 
that was paying out with the reel music, and all the time 
he was advancing step by step toward the lake-shore, but 
never losing the bend of his rod. 

The length of time required to kill a trout on a fly-rod 
depends on the size and strength of the fish, and on the 
weight of the rod. The Doctor was handling a seven-ounce 
rod, and the fish was strong. He accepted a cigar which 
I offered him, lit it, and was patient. He had checked 
the fish with a hundred feet of line out; and now the 
plucky animal was swaying back and forth in arcs of a 



70 I GO A -FISHING. 

circle, refusing utterly every invitation to make the ra- 
dius shorter. 

" How much does he weigh, Doctor ?" 

" Five pounds, if an ounce, and something more ; he's 
by far the biggest and the strongest fish I ever struck in 
these waters." 

" Be patient, Doctor." 

" Hum." 

" Take it easy, old friend. Don't get excited. Keep 
your nerves steady, and your brain — " 

" Shut up, will you, John ?" 

" Can't you take advice ? You're fond of giving it. 
Look out there ! Jove, what a rush that was !" 

And so it was. The trout had made a sudden dash 
for deeper water. The Doctor could not spare twelve 
yards more of line, and, as he saw it going out, he fol- 
lowed his fish into the lake. Fortunately it shoaled off 
gradually, but he did not turn the obstinate trout till he 
stood in three feet of water ; and there he stood for near- 
ly ten minutes while the contest went on. Nearer and 
nearer to him came the trout, then he was off again ; then 
nearer by a slow reeling-in, then away with a mad rush. 
But at last he gave up suddenly, as fat fish are apt to do ; 
and the fisherman, bringing him up to his side, having 
no 1 landing-net, dexterously passed his hand under his 
throat, and, burying thumb and finger in his gills, walked 
ashore with a trout that weighed five pounds and seven 
ounces on the scales at the Rookery when we reached 
home. 

This was the largest trout that had been killed in that 
neighborhood within the memory of man. And the 
brook trout is not found in many localities as large. In 
Maine I have seen many brook trout weighing over eight 



HOBBIES. 71 

pounds each, and have evidence, satisfactory to me, that 
at least two trout, the veritable Salmo fontinalis, our 
speckled brook trout, were killed in Rangely Lake weigh- 
ing a trifle over eleven pounds each. This was years 
ago, when I first knew those waters, before these times 
in which they are more thoroughly fished; but at the 
present day it is not uncommon to take them in Moose- 
tockmaguntic and Rangely lakes running over seven 
pounds. 

Always when the Doctor has killed a large fish he be- 
comes talkative, but not as in town, where he is apt, if 
excited, to be intolerant and abusive. One may as well 
use plain words and speak truth, and 1 do it though he be 
in a rage when he reads what I have written. It would 
seem as if piscatorial success mollified the inner man and 
toned down the more objectionable characteristics. We 
all know that anglers love to talk, and to talk of their 
several special hobbies, whatever they may be. Hence 
it occurs that parties going a-fishing together find no lack 
of subjects of conversation, and there is no subject in the 
world which does not properly and naturally belong to 
trout -fishing as one of its accompaniments. I have a 
friend who is given to paleontological studies when in 
his own library, and who, when we are fishing together, 
talks steadfastly from morning till night, and oftener from 
night till morning, about fossils and formations that are 
utterly unintelligible to me. But do I stop him ? Not at 
all. An angler would no more think of stopping his 
friend's trotting on a hobby than he would of stopping 
the noise of a brook that he was fishing. For what one 
of us may not find the time when he wants a passive, con- 
tented listener? It's a luxury to have a human ear to 
talk into, even if all you say goes out at the ear opposite. 



72 I GO A- FISHING. 

An angler talks sometimes as he casts ; right along, 
steadily, perseveringly ; without a rise, without, after a 
little, even expecting a rise. That being a custom of the 
guild, it would be out of place and character to stop the 
talking of a fellow-angler. 

As we rode home the Doctor talked with great satis- 
faction, and, as anglers are apt to do, rode his favor- 
ite hobby, which had nothing to do with trout-fishing. 
Philip had received a package of old books from Leipsic 
a few days before, and among them were some of the 
Basle editions of the works of Erasmus — those beautiful 
editions which Froben ornamented with borders by Urse 
Graff, and initial letters which are attributed by some to 
Holbein. The Doctor is not a collector of books him- 
self, but is something of a Dibdin, enjoying the libraries 
of his friends, and it is not saying much to affirm that he 
knows more about old books and old editions than Mr. 
Dibdin ever knew. So he began to discuss with Philip a 
question in which he is interested, and no one else in 
America can possibly be interested, as to what was the 
first book which Erasmus ever published. Now this hap- 
pened, without being directly in my line, to be a point on 
which I fancied I could throw a little light, and as they 
dismounted at the door, and I heard the Doctor affirm, 
" I tell you, the edition of his friend Hermann's poems is 
the first thing he ever put to press," I put in a word — ■ 

" That's Mercator's edition of 1497, isn't it, Doctor?" 

" Yes, it is" (very gruffly). 

"Well, Erasmus published poems of his own before 
that." 

" What do you know about it ? Stick to your old wood- 
cuts, and don't bother about editions." 

"But I've got the book." 



ERASMUS. 73 

" With wood-cuts ?" 

"With only one, the large printer's mark of Denidel." 

" What's the date ?." 

"No date." 

" What's the poetry ?" 

By this time we were in the library, and before I an- 
swered I hunted up a memorandum I had given Philip 
when I first noticed the book in my own library, and read 
it to the Doctor : " De casa Natalitia Jesu et paupere 
puerperio sive virginis Marie Carmen noviter emendatum. 
Title-page has Denidel's book-mark ; follow two pages of 
a letter of Erasmus to Boethius, dated at end, Scriptum 
ruri tumultuarie sexto Idus novembres; nineteen pages 
of seven different short poems by Erasmus ; and at the end 
a statement that this is a corrected edition, the former hav- 
ing contained errors. This occurs in the colophon: 'Au- 
tor et impressor presentis codicis almi sistantur rutilo 
post sua fata polo.' " " Now, Doctor, if you can find any 
account of that book in any bibliography, or any life of 
Erasmus, let me know about it, won't you ?" 

" Of course I will. Does Ehrard mention it ?" 

" No. But the whole science of bibliography is in its 
infancy. Men copy one another instead of making per- 
sonal examinations. It's astonishing how much history 
is a repetition of old stories that never had any authority." 

" What do you know about bibliography ? You talk as 
if you were a dealer in old books. You have a few lots 
of old wood-cut illustrations, well enough in their way, but 
you are lamentably ignorant of old books. The science 
of bibliography is more nearly a complete science than 
any I know of. It is true there is no one work that will 
answer all your purposes, but — " 

" No, nor any ten works. But let that pass. John has 



74 I GO A -FISHING. 

here a good copy of the Frankfort edition of your friend 
Pirkheimer. What a wretch the old fellow was !" 

" There you are again. Now, what have you read of 
his works. What reason have you for abusing a learned 
man like that, the friend of the great Reformers, the patron 
of art ? You know no more about Pirkheimer than you 
know of trout-fishing." 

" I'm ashamed of you, Doctor. I didn't think you 
would be guilty of defending a notorious libertine, an in- 
flated egotist, one who sought notoriety by attaching him- 
self to great men, and patronized art not for the art's sake, 
but for the sake of being a patron." 

" Why, Effendi," said Philip, " what's the matter ? Did 
Bilibald ever insult you? Where did you meet him to 
get in such a rage with him ?" 

" I meet him in my own library every day, for whenever 
I look at one of Diirer's Madonnas or pictures of the 
Virgin in any scene of her life, I wonder if the face of his 
wife Agnes is there, and, while looking for it, I am always 
sure to see the brutal physiognomy of Bilibald Pirkheimer, 
who has outraged Diirer and vilified poor Agnes by mak- 
ing her famous for all time as a vixen, when I have no 
manner of doubt she was a pure, gentle, and lovely 
woman." 

" I thought every one had agreed about Agnes Diirer. 
I'm sure one meets only one story about her in all the 
books." 

"Yes; and, as I said just now, history is a repetition 
of old stories, and in this case it is a repetition of one 
old falsehood told by the lying pen of Pirkheimer. 

" No woman has been more vilified in history than Ag- 
nes Diirer, and none more wrongfully. She may have 
been worse than she is represented ; but until we have a 



AGNES DURER. 75 

better witness against her than Bilibald Pirkheimer, she 
should be regarded as a loved and lovely woman. It is 
strange that so many admirers of the great master who 
have written concerning his life should have been content 
to follow this old story, told by a man notoriously unfit to 
express an opinion about a virtuous woman, and do not 
seem ever to have entertained a notion that his accusa- 
tions were unworthy credit. If he were otherwise cred- 
ible, it would tell much against him that he should volun- 
teer to a stranger a sharp tirade against the character of 
a woman with whom he confesses his relations have been 
always unfriendly. What business had this fat egotist to 
write such a letter about a woman at all ? If he would be 
guilty of such a letter about the wife of his friend, I can 
well believe that he would not stop at falsehood. 

"Let us gather all the testimony which exists on the 
subject of Agnes Diirer's character, and we shall find that 
Bilibald Pirkheimer is the solitary witness against her. 
Upon analyzing his evidence, we find this to be the state 
of facts. After Diirer was dead, Pirkheimer had occa- 
sion to write a long letter to one Tcherte, in Vienna, and, 
alluding to Diirer's death and his own relations to him, 
he breaks out into a tirade against Diirer's widow. He 
says, in substance, that she had always regarded him as 
her enemy, and that since Diirer's death she would not 
see. him nor have any thing to do with him ; he ascribes 
Diirer's death to her, says that she worried him always, 
and the specific effect which he charges her with produ- 
cing was that Diirer was dried up, and did not dare to go 
into society or indulge in gayety; he had often expost- 
ulated with her, and told her that she would kill her hus- 
band by keeping him so closely at work; but he only 
met with her ingratitude ; for whoever was a friend of her 



76 I GO A -FISHING. 

husband's she regarded as her enemy. In this same let- 
ter he complains that Agnes had disposed of a pair of 
stag's antlers, and many other fine things of Diirer's, which 
he had wanted, but she sold them for a mere trifle, and 
did not let him know. 

" Here comes in a suspicion. If Agnes loved money 
so much, why throw away these fine things ? And, again, 
what is Pirkheimer's motive in writing all this tirade about 
his friend's wife and himself to a stranger ? for Tcherte 
appears by this very letter to be a new correspondent, not 
an old friend. Above all, who was this Pirkheimer, and 
what his character, that we may weigh his testimony 
against a woman, a widow, and the widow of his friend ? 
In this same letter he tells Tcherte that she and her sis- 
ter are pious and honorable women, but that he would 
prefer to have business with a loose woman rather than 
with such a scolding, fault-finding, pious woman. Now 
Pirkheimer, as we know from abundant evidence, had 
much familiarity with loose women. Beyond dispute, he 
was a fat, sensual man, given to free life, denying himself 
nothing on the score of morality, and both in his corres- 
pondence and his intercourse with Diirer seeking to make 
him the confidant of his adventures, and receiving always 
admonitions in return, given sometimes sharply and some- 
times in ridicule. His character was such that we are 
fully justified in regarding him as unfit to express an 
opinion in regard to a pure woman. We will take his tes- 
timony, therefore, only for what it is worth, and out of his 
own story of his relations to Agnes Diirer construct a his- 
tory which seems far more likely to be the true one than 
this which has generally been accepted from his tirade. 

" Diirer and Pirkheimer were friends in boyhood. The 
latter was rich, and of high rank in the old city ; the for- 



AGNES DURER. 77 

mer was poor, the son of an honest goldsmith, who had 
counted no less than eighteen children in his family, most 
of whom, indeed, had died in very early life. As they 
grew up, the friendship continued ; but while the artist 
was driven to hard work for his bread, the rich man de- 
voted his life to luxury. Diirer married a young girl of 
good family and of great beauty. He needed just such a 
wife as she proved. Her influence on his life was all for 
good. Pirkheimer grew to be a dissolute man, and Diirer 
had hard work to resist his constant desire to carry him 
off from his wife and his studio to join in ' gayety.' Then 
commenced the differences between the artist's wife and 
his friend. We can plainly see what he means when he 
writes Tcherte that she prevented Albert from going into 
society or indulging in gayety. The sort of society and 
gayety which Pirkheimer desired him to enjoy is abun- 
dantly evident from his correspondence when the artist 
was in Venice. The young wife had a more powerful in- 
fluence on the artist than his old friend and all his allur- 
ing temptations. The result which came about is just 
what we often see in modern life. The friend of the man 
takes a strong dislike to the woman who wins the greater 
influence, and the woman can never forgive the man who 
wishes to draw her husband from her to low and vile asso- 
ciations." 

The Doctor. "There is a story that Agnes used to 
sit above her husband's working-room, and keep him at 
his work by speaking through a hole in the ceiling." 

" Yes ; and it has no other foundation than this, that 
some one who had taken Pirkheimer's evidence against 
Agnes imagined this absurd story. If such a hole there 
was, I have little doubt that sometimes, when Albert was 
bored to the last extreme by such lazy loungers as Pirk- 



78 I GO A-FISHING. 

heimer, stupid from last night's excesses, and not able to 
see that his friend wanted to be at work, Agnes would 
come to his help by calling out, ' Albrecht, are you alone? 
I am coming down to see you.' I would take my affida- 
vit that through that hole in the ceiling a thousand kind 
words went up and down, and never one either way that 
was not loving. 

"Dismiss Pirkheimer and his libels from our minds, 
and we may construct for Diirer a home full of all that 
was beautiful and lovely. He had his mother, and it was 
the delight of his life to care for her in the lonesome 
years of coming age ; his young brother, whom he watched 
and guided with tender anxiety; above all, his gentle, 
beautiful, and faithful wife, whose face is the Madonna 
that he best liked of all his works, always with him, al- 
ways enjoying with -him those wonderful conceptions of 
the beauty and grandeur of the unseen world, those ex- 
quisite home ideas of the life of the Virgin mother of the 
Lord, sharing constantly his every thought of earth and 
heaven. 

"But I am not disposed to deal with imaginations 
now. I prefer a plain discussion of known facts. There 
is a great error, and succession of errors, in which writers 
have followed one another like a flock of sheep, concern- 
ing Diirer's letters to Pirkheimer written from Venice in 
1506. The first mistake is made in regarding it as strange 
that he so seldom mentions his wife, and that his few mes- 
sages to her are so cold. Enough, in reply to this, that 
he knew his wife's opinion of Pirkheimer, and their estab- 
lished dislike, and he therefore exercised discretion and 
judgment in his correspondence. Still more, he knew 
Pirkheimer, and had no desire to talk to him about one 
so pure as Agnes. 



AGNES DURER. 79 

" In substance, he is to be understood as saying, ' You 
and I are friends, but let my wife alone.' Curious blun- 
ders are made by all translators of the queer old Bavarian 
dialect in which he writes. One serious blunder occurs 
in the latest English book — a very good book, too — Mrs. 
Heaton's — where the meaning of a sentence is wholly 
changed. Pirkheimer had spoken in his coarse way of 
many persons and things, and, among others, had for once 
ventured to speak of the artist's wife. His remark was, 
in effect, that if Diirer did not hasten home, ' I will make 
love to your wife.' The word which I translate ' make 
love' is capable of several translations, conveying a coarse 
idea, or a more common signification — tease, annoy, tor- 
ment. Diirer's reply is short, sharp, and distinct, but 
strangely mistranslated by Mrs. Heaton, by Scott, and by 
others. He does not say, 'You may keep her till death.' 
He never wrote such a brutal sentence. But he replies, 
simply, 'This is wrong; you will bring her to her death.' 
The only meaning properly to be extracted from this is a 
reproof as sharp as he could use to his creditor, to whom 
he was then under heavy obligations, and unable to pay. 
Neither is Agnes the ' reckon-mistress ' named in these 
letters. On the contrary, coupled as this 'reckon-mis- 
tress' is with women of loose character of Pirkheimer's 
acquaintance, she is clearly one of them, and no one 
should have dreamed that Diirer joined his wife and such 
persons in one sentence. 

" Her reputation as a saving person is to her credit, 
since we have abundant evidence that she was not nig- 
gardly, Pirkheimer to the contrary notwithstanding; for 
she never seems to have restrained Diirer in his free pur- 
chases of curiosities and objects of taste in art, and the 
furniture of their home was luxurious and elegant for the 



80 I GO A- FISHING. 

period. Many a money-lender has found an artist's wife 
much more careful to compel exact and honest dealing 
than the free and careless artist, and has thence taken 
deep offense. 

" We know so little of Diirer's private life, have such 
very brief extracts from his journals and correspondence, 
and possess so little on which to construct his home life, 
that every one seems to have seized on Pirkheimer's let- 
ter to Tcherte, and thereon founded the current theory 
about Agnes, interpreting every possible suggestion by 
this false light. 

"We know absolutely nothing about the family life in 
the old Nuremberg house, save only that Diirer lived at 
home and found his pleasures there. And from that old 
home at length Diirer "emigravit," as saith the record 
on his tomb — went away to another and fairer country, 
where many of his dreams became realities of glory. No 
record is left us of the later hours of his life, in the gloom 
that was settling in the artist's chamber. We may be- 
lieve, if this miserable libeler, Pirkheimer, can be kept si- 
lent while we imagine the scene, that those last hours 
were full of tender and holy conversation, not unmingled 
with lookings forward to a reunion. It was doubtless 
agreed that they two would rest together until the resur- 
rection, for he was laid in her father's tomb. 

" Then she was left to the world and her memories of 
the man who, more than all other men, had taught Ger-' 
many to love the beautiful, and filled it with that exceed- 
ing splendor of light which to this day characterizes Ger- 
man art. 

" As soon as they had laid the artist in the grave, Pirk- 
heimer sought to possess himself of the treasures of art 
with which he had been surrounded. They were many 



AGNES DURER. 8 1 

and valuable. The incident of the stag's horns is but 
one. There were other beautiful things, as we know, 
and as Pirkheimer says to Tcherte, and Agnes did not 
let him have them. Why should she? He had always 
been her traducer, had long sought in vain to sow dis- 
cord between her and her husband, and she had good 
right to have done with him thenceforth forever. Doubt- 
less she very plainly gave him so to understand, and dis- 
tributed the memorials of the artist among those who 
could share with her the memories of an affection that 
had always been offensive to the man who had so much 
and so long vilified her. Then the ire of the fat patri- 
cian arose, and he went storming around Nuremberg, 
telling all men that if Diirer had only drank more wine, 
and eaten more suppers, and lived a gayer life with him, 
he would have lived longer. And this being his promi- 
nent sensation at the time, he can not resist the tempta- 
tion to put it in a letter to Tcherte, a stranger to whom 
he had occasion to write ; and the letter survives to dark- 
en the memory of Agnes. Thus the evil that this man 
did lives after him." 

F 



V. 

SUNDAY MORNING AND EVENING. 

" And is it all over ?" 

" All over, Philip. The freshness of youth, the strength 
of manhood, the wisdom of maturity, the feebleness of 
age — all are over; and in their place has come a calm, a 
repose, so deep, so profound, that, to look on the old man 
as he lies there this morning, you would not think he 
could be roused by the trumpet of the angel." 

" And how died he ?" 

" As the good man always dies. He called his family 
about him at the gray dawn of the Sabbath morning; and 
they came, some from tearful watching, some from deep 
slumber after last night's tears; and he spoke to them 
words of sublime and holy import; and when his voice 
grew feeble, he looked at them, and they said his face was 
radiant with the light he saw but they saw not, only as 
thus reflected ; and at length, as the first sun rays came 
across the hill and through his window, and lit the room 
with Sabbath lustre, he murmured, with broken voice but 
not unmusical, 

' Oh happy harbor of God's saints,' 
and then died." 

" What, said nothing after that ?" 

" Nothing, but he looked steadfastly into heaven, as if 
he saw Stephen's vision ; and his white hand beat time to 



SUNDAY MORNING. 83 

some unheard music long after he had ceased to sing. 
Jessie asked me, in her simple way, if I did not think he 
was listening to the angels singing ; and I smiled at her 
idea, but told her I thought they did not measure their 
songs by time in the choir that he was then ready to join." 

It was Sunday morning. I had but just roused myself 
from long and profound sleep, and, turning to the window 
near my bed, had reached out my hand to throw back the 
curtain, when I heard the conversation which I have given. 
It was between Philip and the Doctor. The Doctor was 
on horseback, having returned from an early ride over to 
the farm-house before mentioned, and the fact that the 
good old farmer had gone to broader and greener fields 
than these was thus communicated to me. 

It somewhat solemnized me that while I rested so 
calmly on this side of the hill he should have gone from 
the other ; that if the old man could have looked back as 
he went away, he would have seen his neighbors sleeping, 
forgetful of him, while he was going through such a won- 
drous change. 

I dressed slowly and came down to breakfast, which 
was now ready, and with which we were admonished to 
hasten, as we must soon start for church over on the hill. 

After a breakfast which was unusually still, even for 
Sunday morning, the horses were at the door before the 
long wagon, and we all went to the church together in the 
good old country fashion. 

The wagon had a spring box, and the seats were cush- 
ioned, only the back one had a buffalo robe thrown over 
it, and six persons, two on a seat, rode comfortably and 
pleasantly in it. 

The Doctor and myself had the back seat. Philip and 
John had the middle seat, and Sam drove with Simon 



84 I GO A -FISHING. 

(the blackest and best of negroes) on the seat beside 
him. 

It was six miles to the church, up hill and down, yet 
mostly by a shaded road through forests. The horses 
jogged on slowly, for they are never hurried on a Sunday. 
We came up the hill toward the cross roads, where the 
old church stands, and as we approached, other wagons 
very like ours were coming in from all directions. Driv- 
ing up to the church door they deposited their loads, and 
the men took them to the shed, or to the grove of trees 
back of the church, and made the horses fast, to await the 
close of morning service. 

We dismounted at the stone step, and entered the gate 
in front of the church together, walking through a crowd 
of men who congregate at the door, and wait the close of 
the first prayer before they enter. The custom is hea- 
thenish, but is as reverently observed as is the going to 
church at all; and no preaching or lecturing avails to 
make them come in and take their seats before the serv- 
ice commences. 

This assembly is the weekly interchange of news ; and 
the crops, weather, and general prospects of the season 
are freely discussed at the church door. This morning 
the death of the old farmer was the chief topic of conver- 
sation, and a gloom fell on all, for all loved him. It 
seemed as if death had come into a family, so deep was 
the feeling manifested by those who now first heard the 
news. And in the church I saw many old persons weep- 
ing all the morning; and why should they not weep? 
For he was eighty-three years their companion and friend, 
and if eighty years of living together in the same world, 
the same county, the same congregation; if eighty years 
of worship together in the same church, at the same altar, 



A COUNTRY CHURCH. 85 

be not enough to make people love one another, I am 
afraid that an eternity in the same heaven would not suf- 
fice. 

Blessings on the warm country heart. There were tears 
shed that morning in the old church that honored the eyes 
that shed them ; and the pastor himself spoke with broken 
voice and imperfect utterance when he told them that on 
Tuesday afternoon the old man would be brought once 
again, and for the last time, into the church, and then car- 
ried out to sleep with the dead of the country in the old 
hill-side grave-yard. 

The service was simple and beautiful. The first prayer 
was but an invocation of blessing, and after it followed 
the stampede into the galleries and side aisles of the men 
and boys who had congregated at the door. 

Then followed a psalm. If you have read " The Old 
House by the River," you will understand me when I 
speak of the emotion which I feel in a country church on 
a calm Sabbath morning. The sound of that psalm going 
up peacefully to God from the little church ; the voices of 
the old men, broken but pleasant, joining in the song of 
praise ; the pleasant voices (out of time and out of tune, 
but in unison of heart) of the old ladies, here and there 
about the church; the occasional high note of an unprac- 
ticed child ; the clear, rich melody of a bird-like voice that 
is always heard somewhere in every country congregation 
— all these sounds are so familiar and so holy to us, that 
there are few places on earth so near to heaven as a seat 
in a country church on such a morning. 

They sang rudely the psalms of the Scottish Church, 
but, rude though they are and rudely sung, they neverthe- 
less have about them forever the sanctity which the lips 
of martyrs gave them. They were sung when the foam 



86 I GO A -FISHING. 

of the inflowing tide bubbled over the lips that gave them 
utterance, when the flames of the chariots of fire made 
them more audible in heaven than on earth, when their 
broken syllables scarce prevailed to overcome the sobs 
and moans of earthly agony — syllables that were heard 
yonder, though the moans were loudest here. Yea, they 
are sanctified by notes of triumph that have been answered 
by notes of angelic welcome. 

There was nothing noteworthy in the sermon. The 
clergyman preached specially to young children, from the 
text " Children, obey your parents," and I derived some 
good from it, though I scarcely took into my wandering 
brain one sentence of the whole. The good came in this 
wise. In the front pew, directly under the pulpit, sat a 
small boy, alone in one end of the pew, and he received 
the short, terse sentences of the minister as if each were 
a musket-ball. You could see him start back at each, 
and then he looked up wistfully once in a while and fixed 
his clear eyes on the wall above the pulpit, and seemed 
to brace himself for the next shot, but when it came it al- 
ways took him down with unerring force, and he shrank 
into his corner again. That front pew was a magic mir- 
ror wherein was visible a scene of far-away years. Longer 
ago than even the gray hairs in my beard would seem to 
indicate I saw a boy seated just so, and listening to a ser- 
mon in the old meeting-house; and the text was "Train 
up a child in the way he should go." Subtle and inex- 
plicable power of memory that should bring back out of 
the grave of years such an incident, long forgotten, yet 
now clear as the sunshine in the middle aisle. At once 
when the vision came the present vanished out of mind. 
We were no longer men in the hill-side church, but we 
were boys in a distant village, and the dead were living, 



A VISION. 87 

and the living now were unborn, and the sad flood of 
time had all swept back and left the flowers and fields as 
in the long-gone days. In the pulpit stood the pastor of 
those days, in the pews sat the congregation of those days, 
in the corner pew sat the blue-eyed children of the elder, 
and across the aisle the black-haired boys of the other 
elder, and — and — and — what was that fairest of visions 
that beamed on me in the clear sunlight by the south win- 
dow? What mighty power called out of dust that form 
like the form of the Madonna, that face like the face of 
an angel ? 

As I write this to-night in my library in New York, I 
look around me and seek in vain one connecting link 
between the present and the past. Not even the por- 
traits on the wall take me to those scenes, for portraits 
grow to be inhabitants themselves, and do not seem like- 
nesses of men and women that lived in other places. 
Sometimes from the face of one or the other of the Ma- 
donnas I catch a dreamy hint of the beautiful of the old 
times, and oftener perhaps the Flora, who carries her load 
of flowers over yonder, looks at me with a sharp, quick 
look, and seems to say, " Yes, I am she " — but who she is 
I know not. 

Over there where the sunlight came in she sat in her 
purity, and the golden hair was brighter than the sunlight 
on her white shoulder. She listened, and yet did not 
listen, for she had always an absent look about her face, 
so that it seemed as if she were talking with those unseen 
to others. And doubtless so she was on that Sunday aft- 
ernoon. And the boy of whom I spoke looked at her, 
and he forgot the thunder of the pulpit, and, climbing on 
the seat, put his head through a broken place in the rail 
that surrounded it (the old square pew with rail and cur- 



05 I GO A- FISHING. 

tains), so he might look more clearly into the perfect 
beauty of that child's face. I always did maintain and 
will maintain, though it was in church, and a church of 
the strictest Scotch persuasion too, that the boy was wise 
in the pursuit of study, wiser, indeed, in studying that fair 
face than in listening to what he could not comprehend. 
The sermon was to his parents, and he was to receive its 
beneficial effects at second-hand. Meantime he sought 
the fairest and most perfect work of the Maker's hands 
in all the circle of his vision, and by experience knew 
where to look for it. It was not his fault that his ears 
went through the rail easily, but would not let his head 
come back, and that the congregation saw his situation, 
and the young ones first and then the old ones began to 
smile, and the smile became a laugh, and the end of it 
was that the minister stopped till he was rescued. 

But all the time there was no smile on that one face 
at which he had been looking, only a sad, anxious ex- 
pression, which, for the instant, took the place of the or- 
dinary peaceful look which rested on it. And then the 
sermon went on, and the singing followed, and the bene- 
diction after the singing, and he found her at the church 
door, and the two walked homeward hand in hand, and 
said nothing of the accident, for both had forgotten it. 
Happy forgetfulness of five years' old ! Happy memo- 
ries of half a century ! 

She was older than I by just five years, and very soon, ' 
as the time now seems to me, but long, long after that, 
as it then seemed, Katie Stuart was a maiden of exceed- 
ing beauty, the pride of all the country. My friend, Dr. 
Johnston, was a boy of that congregation, her cousin, and 
of just her age. 

" Doctor," said I, as we drove homeward, " tell me of 



KATIE STUART. 89 

what you thought this morning when the people came 
near breaking down in the singing?" 

"Have you forgotten that Abraham Stewart was the 
younger brother of old Deacon Stuart, who married my 
aunt, and who always spelled his name with the u a ?" 

" No, I have not forgotten it. I have been thinking 
of him this morning." 

" Yes ; but you did not know Katie, the darling Katie 
of my happiest memories. You were a child when she 
went away." 

Not so young as the Doctor thought, but I said noth- 
ing, and he went on : 

" I was thinking of the deacon ; and when that little 
break in the music occurred, I remembered how once 
her voice, clear and heavenly, led them all, and when the 
psalm was finished, I heard that voice floating away into 
the deep, far sky. It went before her to God. Pure as 
her own soul, which I sometimes think was won to heaven 
by the returning melody of her own songs ! There is no 
angel there with holier voice. I heard it this morning." 

I was silent for a little, thinking, " Shall I tell him how 
well I remember that morning?" But I did not then, 
and the subject came up again in the evening, as you 
will learn. So I sat, and recalled a memory of the old 
church which was very touching that morning in con- 
nection with the death of farmer Stewart. Sixty years 
ago there was a voice in the choir that thrilled his heart 
every Sunday morning, so that he listened to it more 
than to the words of the song. He was a stout, strong 
man, and yet he was a child in the presence of that coun- 
try maiden, and he loved her with exceeding love. He 
served her father, not so long as Jacob for Leah, yet with 
no less devotion, and for a while with no more success. 



90 I GO A-FISHING. 

One day the farmer's family had gone to visit a friend, 
some ten miles distant, and, not having room in their 
wagon, they had returned, leaving Lucy to be sent for. 
And toward evening the old man — the young man, I 
should say — how strange this tale of his youth seems to 
me who have always known him as old — the young man 
was sent for her, and, having taken her into the wagon 
with him, started to return. 

Five miles of the road were accomplished, when the 
gloom of a tempest surrounded them, and a storm burst 
on them with terrible fury. There was no shelter for a 
mile, save the old church, that stood alone on the hill, 
and thither he urged his horse, with difficulty and no 
small danger. 

They reached the door, which was never closed, for 
the house of God in those days was always open, and 
the girl found shelter, while he secured the horse in safe- 
ty under a shed, and returned to her. 

He had never told her of his love, and now was a fair 
opportunity. In the wild flashes of the lightning, the lit- 
tle church gleamed out on the valleys that it overlooked, 
like a silent, calm mother, to keep all safe in the war of 
the elements. No one who caught sight of it that night 
dreamed that it was occupied ; but there were two hearts 
in it that commenced to beat in unison that night at the 
altar where they pledged their love to each other. They 
were not afraid, not terrified, though the tempest was fear- 
ful, and though every window gleamed in the constant 
flashes of the lightning. With arms folded around each 
other, they knelt at the altar of the old church, and spoke 
to each other of the future. The storm passed on, and 
they knelt there still. It was a holy night, to which in 
after years their souls recurred with never-ceasing joy. 



THE GLEN. 9 1 

Yes, sneer — laugh — blaspheme that holy love, poor 
miserable dog of the world's whipping, who have never 
felt the blessedness of pure, warm, woman love, but know 
that for sixty years of Sabbaths while that man worship- 
ped God at that same altar, he never forgot that night, 
nor failed to thank God for that tempest. 

And when they carried him into the church again, and 
laid him down prone at the altar foot, whereby he knelt 
with the maiden he loved so long ago, if his old bones 
revived not at the blessed touch, if his old heart thrilled 
not with the remembered love, if his old cheek grew not 
warm with the balmy breath, if his old eyes smiled not 
with the old, old love, if he lay there still, calm, dead, I 
tell you there is an altar, a church, a land, where they 
two kneel together, where their eyes will be radiant with 
love, where their lips will be eloquent with rapturous 
song ! Again, and yet again, I thank God for the immor- 
tality of love. 

We reached home about two o'clock, and sat on the 
piazza all the afternoon, reading and talking. Before the 
sun went down we walked up the glen, and sat by the 
waterfall, where the stream dashes down some fifty feet of 
rock. Often in the evening gloom that cascade assumes 
the appearance of a female form, robed in white, sitting 
on the rock. The western sun shines in on the stream, 
and you can see the beauty of the sunset from any seat 
on the rocks above or below the cascade. 

Abraham Stewart's son rode over to see us, and joined 
us in the glen. He told us all about his father's death. 

The glen on such a Sunday afternoon is a place of 
worship. There are stones enough for sermons, but stones 
preach no sermons when waterfalls are nigh. Cliffs, prec- 
ipices, mountains, alike stand silent when the water has 



02 I GO A- FISHING. 

voice, all do but echo the alternate music and prayers of 
the stream. 

For of a verity that is church-like, minster-like, cathe- 
dral-like — not in the dome and Sunday music, but in the 
calm which enters and possesses our minds. One could 
not laugh here ; neither could he shout aloud. Smile we 
can, and do, for smiles are not irreverent, nor are they 
necessarily out of keeping with holy places. It depends 
very much on what sort of a smile it is, for they vary as 
much as words ; but to say that a smile is always wrong 
in sacred places or at a sacred time, is as untrue as it 
would be to say that it is always wrong to speak in meet- 
ing, forgetting altogether the psalm, the hymn, and the 
prayer. Smiles in church of a Sabbath morning are not 
heinous sins, and no one thinking rightly would blame 
me for the smile on that Sunday morning in the church, 
for it was only the reflection on my face of the smile which 
came on the rugged countenance of Abraham Stewart 
when he died. The old man smiled ; of such smiles as 
that, albeit you and I have had much of happiness and 
hope in this world, we have never known the beatitude ; 
for it betokened, coming in on the close of a dark, cloud- 
ed day, the sunlight of the land of smiles. For such, ver- 
ily, is heaven, when the folding arms of the Shepherd, to 
whom all saints are lambs, will not be more full of de- 
light than the smile with which he clasps them. 

John Stewart told us about the old man, and the scene 
in his old home on the Saturday evening. "He was a 
good old man," said Philip. The sound of the waterfall 
was louder as he spoke. Was it a change of the wind, or 
was it, as I sometimes think, that the God of nature teaches 
the winds and waters to bear testimony to the memory of 
his servants ? Certainly the voice of a mountain brook 



ABRAHAM STEWART. 93 

that I know of is always more musical and joyful? when I 
sit by it and talk of one who loved it long ago, and whose 
cheerful, happy face and voice were the pride of the village 
church and village choir. Certainly the ocean has no 
such deep, full tone as when I lie on the beach, my elbow 
buried in the sand, and, fixing my eye on one beloved, 
name one who sank in the great sea, whose shout went 
up from a wave top, a mountain summit of the waters, 
whereon uplifted he caught the view of heaven sometimes 
granted to those about to die, and whence he escaped into 
its peace. Certainly the wind has no such voice, no such 
tone of perfect music, as it used to have among the pines 
around the Old House, while Joe Willis and I sat at the 
library window of a September evening and thought of 
the beloved dead ; for we had but to think of them and 
the wind knew our thoughts up there — on my faith, it did. 
I never had a sad thought or a glad one there that the 
wind did not seem to know of. 

I am certain that the waterfall had a louder voice when 
Philip said that Abraham Stewart was a good old man. 
His record is above. He has gone to read it there. We 
read it here, and I add my line of praise to those which 
the hearts of the inhabitants of that country-place have 
long preserved. 

Yes, he died gloriously ; with a smile and a shout, and 
the voice of shouting like the voice of many waters, which 
they who stood beside him heard, or thought they heard, 
audibly from the assembly of saints and martyrs into 
which he passed. He sang the words of a psalm in the 
evening before he died, and Jessie, the child, took up the 
words, and ignorant that her grandfather was departing 
into the solemn company of those who had sung the 
psalm in other years in flame and flood, her voice rang 



94 I GO A- FISHING. 

out on the hushed air, and sounded in heaven, where they 
kept silence to listen. 

The dying man turned his blue eyes lovingly toward 
the window where his darling sat, and listened while she 
sang ; and when she came again to the words which are 
repeated so many times in the psalm, he joined with full 
though low voice, and motioned to all who were around 
him, and they joined also in the sublime chorus : 

" Oh that men to the Lord would give praise for his goodness then, 
And for his works of wonder done unto the sons of men !" 

And then all hushed, and Jessie, nothing abashed, with 
clear, bird-like voice went on, and sang of those that go 
down to the sea in ships, and do business on the great 
waters, nor thought of the ocean that was even then roll- 
ing around her so tempestuously, on whose billows the old 
man was tossed. All was silent while she sang. But her 
grandfather seemed restless, and, manifestly, the heaven 
of his hopes at times was shut out from his vision. But 
when at length the child sang of the calm, the quiet, and 
stillness which the voice of God commanded, and how 
finally he brings them who are troubled unto rest, them 
who are tempest-tossed unto their desired haven, the old 
man grew quiet, his face assumed the smile again, his 
lip grew serenely calm, his eye lustrous, but with the soft 
lustre of a star on a clear night in the mountain country, 
and again, but now with loud, distinct voice, full of cheer* 
he joined the chorus, 

" Oh that men to the Lord would give praise for his goodness then !" 

It were vain with human words to attempt a description 
of the passage from darkness to light, the breaking in on 
the scenes of earth of that all-holy radiance, whereof the 



AMERICAN LUXURY. 95 

Sabbath sunshine, falling among the pearls of the Fall, and 
reflected to our eyes in the effulgence of the bow of prom- 
ise, is only a faint type, worthy of being such only because 
both are his glory who made both. Let us thank God that 
the promise is as unfailing as its glorious seal, on passing 
thunder cloud, on April tears, on the cataract's bosom, on 
the gleaming waterfall, that sits on the rock and laves her 
flashing feet in the pool below, forever sure, in tears or 
laughter, sun or storm, the promise that there shall be no 
more flood. Oh man, clinging to the last stem of hope 
while the stream of life rushes tumultuously downward, 
hear the voice of promise ! Oh man, whose eye is dim 
with watching, seated alone and lonesome on the wreck 
of life, while the tide rises and the waves swell around, 
know that though the tempest be furious, there shall be 
no more flood ! Abraham Stewart found the promise sure, 
and when the flood was gathering, he smiled, and when he 
lay dead there was a smile on his face that did not seem 
to rest there, but it was as if the light of heaven, shining 
on it, were now and then intercepted by the swift wings 
of attending angels. 

As the night came down we went home and dined. 
What would life be, in cottage or camp, in labor or sport, 
without dinner ? 

"What a luxurious race we Americans are getting to 
be," said Steenburger, as we sat smoking in the library, 
where a cheery fire made the atmosphere conversational. 
"We surpass the days of that splendid extravagance in 
Rome, which history seems to regard as unequaled. Look 
at it. We have dined together here, and it was a plain, 
ordinary dinner. We had a piece of lamb from the home 
farm, but I think that was the solitary American dish on 
the table. The spices were of all the world ; the sauces 



96 I GO A-FISHING. 

were made in England; the vegetables, peas, and toma- 
toes grew a thousand miles off in Bermuda; the ancho- 
vies came from the Baltic; the olives from the Mediter- 
ranean ; the wine — Where did that red wine come from, 
Philip ?" 

Philip. " From the remotest borders of Europe. It is 
the only Hungarian wine I ever drank that I liked. It 
is Turkenblud, the blood of the Turks, and only one vine- 
yard grows that quality. The Effendi here sent to Hun- 
gary for it." 

Steenburger. " We have had red wine from the land 
of the ancient Scythians, and white wine from the banks 
of the Rhine. The coffee was a mixture of Mocha and 
Java — Africa and the far Indies united for us to concoct 
that tiny cup of beverage. The cup itself came from 
China, made there two hundred years ago; no modern 
work resembles that old ware; and the dinner was served 
on dishes made in France, three thousand miles off across 
the Atlantic. The fruits were from Havana ; there were 
even some dates from Barbary, or the Eastern Mediter- 
ranean, I don't know which." 

Philip. "They came from Mecca; Mohammed Abd- 
el-Atti sent a skin of them to the Effendi, and rightly 
said there are no such dates to be found out of Araby 
the Blessed." 

Steenburger. " There sits the Doctor, still sipping his 
little glass of Chartreuse from a convent in the heart of 
Europe. What had the Romans to compare with this, 
a common American dinner in New York? Your par- 
don, Philip — it was a good dinner, but nothing extraor- 
dinary." 

Philip. "You have not half enumerated the foreign 
contributions to your feast. The table, the chairs, the 



COMMERCE. 97 

table-cloths, and the napkins — pretty much all the arti- 
cles on the table are of foreign wood or foreign make. 
The knives are of steel, manufactured in England from 
iron dug in Sweden; and the handles are ivory, hunted 
in the jungles of Ethiopia. You are smoking at this mo- 
ment a cigar from Cuba, and I am smoking the tobacco 
of the slopes of Lebanon, in a pipe made at Es-Siout, in 
Egypt, with a stem of jessamine from Asia, and an am- 
ber mouth-piece from the shores of the Baltic Sea." 

The Doctor. "Life in an American house is some- 
thing like this library — a gathering of the labor and in- 
tellect of all nations and all times. What an atmosphere 
to live in ! A sweep of your eye carries you through 
centuries." 

Philip. " But this is not mere luxury after all. These 
contributions of the world to our comfort are cheaper by 
far than the same articles could be made here at home. 
The poor and the rich alike experience the benefits of 
modern commerce. The grand feature of our age is that 
the industry of all the world is made, by the power of 
commerce, to contribute to the comfort of mankind in 
every separate part of the sphere. The whole world now 
works for each individual man, to clothe and feed him, 
and make him happy. There are some who, arguing from 
the money-making point of view, think it better to forbid 
the contributions of foreign labor to the inhabitants of 
each country. They would have England, France, China, 
Prussia, Persia, America, each exclude the labor of the 
other from its soil. The policy carried out would pro- 
tect home labor with a vengeance ! It would make the 
laborer's clothes, and tea and coffee and sugar, and even 
his bread, in each country so costly that he must econo- 
mize more on five dollars a day than he ever used to do 

G 



98 I GO A- FISHING. 

on two. But this talk is verging on politics. What are 
you reading there, John ?" 

Steenburger. "An old hymn-book. You have a 
queer lot of books lying around here." 

The Doctor. " An old hymn is a great thing. What 
voices have sung it ! An old hymn-book is suggestive — 
what emotion it bears record of! I very often find rest 
in reading old hymns. It is only once in a great while 
that I have a sensation. I've almost outgrown sensa- 
tions. When I was fifty years old I thought it over, and 
concluded that I had worn out the sensational possibili- 
ties of my soul. But an old hymn to an old tune con- 
vinced me I was mistaken. One evening last winter in 
London I was passing a church in some street when I 
heard a strain of familiar music, and I stopped shorty just 
in time to catch the last words of a verse in the hymn 
they were singing. Why, Philip, they speak of the war- 
horse starting at the sound of the trumpet. So my old 
heart started at the sound of that hymn and music." 

Myself. " I understand you. Once I was walking 
listlessly of a Sunday afternoon through the narrow 
streets of Cairo, the heart of the Orient to this day as in 
the days of the Caliphs. I came accidentally near the 
house where some missionaries reside, and where they 
and their families were holding service. Out on the 
strange atmosphere of the old city, whose every stone 
and lattice and whose very sky were mysterious, old, and' 
incomprehensible, floated with perfect distinctness the 
words of an old hymn. In an instant I was carried 
away to the church in the up-country village, and I leaned 
against the wall of a house, and thought and thought and 
thought, till the misty condition of my eyes reminded me 
where I was. And that wasn't half so powerful a sensa- 



OLD HYMNS. 99 

tion as I had some months later. I never knew a more 
tempestuous night, for a starry one, than I had in Upper 
Egypt, when a fierce gale carried my boat through the 
pass at Hagar Silsilis. About nine o'clock in the even- 
ing I was standing on deck, watching the stars and list- 
ening to the rush of the boat through the brown Nile, 
swinging and swaying her great sail as she dashed along. 
Suddenly I caught on the wind the strain of an old tune, 
and I saw that we were passing a boat which lay near 
the shore. There were Americans on board, and the 
very words of the hymn came clearly to my ear; or else 
I imagined them. It was a startling interruption to the 
wildness of the scene. My Arabs were as heedless of it 
as of the wind. They lay on deck wrapped up in their 
bournooses, slumbering heavily. The Nubian pilot stood 
firm at the helm. But to me the sound was like a voice 
out of the very sky. What I saw in the next moment's 
imagination it would take hours to tell. We think swift- 
ly. You spoke to me this morning of Deacon Stuart, 
Doctor. 

Steenburger (waking from a dose). " Deacon Stuart ! 
What — here ? I thought he was in glory forty years ago." 

Myself. " Not quite so long, as we count time in this 
slow world. But twenty-five years ago they buried the 
good man, then full of years, ready to go, and ripe for 
heaven. No, he is not coming here to-night, John; but if 
he didn't come to my Nile boat that night with his grand- 
daughter Kate, then all I can say is that I had a powerful 
imagination. The Doctor told me this morning that I 
was too young to remember Katie Stuart. Old friend, I 
had been looking into her brown eyes all the morning 
service time — looking through forty years of storm and 
through six feet of heavy earth. I not remember Katie ! 



IOO I GO A -FISHING. 

Why she was the prettiest girl in the whole congrega- 
tion — older than I ; but I used to look at her in church 
and wonder if any thing more beautiful was ever seen in 
any age or land. When I read of Helen and Cleopatra 
and Lucretia, and all the beauties of old times, it was al- 
ways with the notion that each one, blonde or brune, must 
have looked like Katie Stuart. And a boy's impressions 
of that kind last him for life. And that night that I was 
telling of, driving up the Nile before the northern gale, 
when I passed the American boat and heard the sound 
of a hymn, I saw in an instant the old church on that 
very Sunday morning that you were thinking of, Doctor ; 
and all that scene came back to me, for they were sing- 
ing on that Nile boat the same hymn which I always re- 
member as the last song of Katie Stuart. 

" The church was unusually full that morning, for there 
had been two deaths in the previous week, and a funeral 
sermon was expected. The day was bitterly cold. The 
thermometer was twenty degrees below zero all day. I 
remember how much emotion was visible in the church, 
for the deaths had been those of young persons very much 
loved, and there had been a story that one of them, a fine 
fellow, but long failing, had loved Katie Stuart very dearly. 
Whether she knew it or not no one could say. But when 
the minister had finished a touching sermon, leaving young 
and old in tears, and gave out the hymn to sing, it was 
hard work to sing it. The precentor got along tolerably 
well till he came to the beginning of a verse where he 
found almost no one to help him, and he sang the first 
three or four notes with only two or three voices accom- 
panying him, and then he broke down with a sort of sob. 
Then — I can hear it now — how delicious, how glorious it 
was ! — Katie Stuart's voice, clear as a bird's, floated up, as 



MEMORY OF RHYME. IOI 

if she were inspired, and the very atmosphere was filled 
with its melody as she sang : 

' I would begin the music here 

And so my soul should rise : 
Oh, for some heavenly notes to bear 
My passions to the skies !' 

It was five miles from the church to the deacon's farm. 
The old man drove, and Katie sat wrapped in buffalo 
robes by his side in the sleigh. I remember the black 
horses well. When they started I was looking at her 
face. I had watched her from the close of the service. 
She spoke to no one, but went directly to the sleigh, 
quietly let her grandfather wrap the robes around her, re- 
mained silent, and the horses went off at a bound. What 
the deacon thought of all the way home no one can im- 
agine, but when he reached home Katie had gone far 
away. She was sitting wrapped in the robes with a smil- 
ing face, but cold and calm and dead in the sleigh. That 
hymn was her last utterance in our language, which, make 
it as passionate as we may, does not, can not remotely 
imitate the songs they sing up yonder." 

The Doctor. " It is plain to me that some of our most 
vivid memories, or, rather, our recollections, are caused by 
familiar sounds, especially musical sounds. We remem- 
ber rhyme much more easily than prose or blank verse." 

Steenburger. " Yes ; I often find a rhyming lot of 
words wandering in my brain, and can't tell where they 
come from. I know only that they have been stowed 
away somewhere there for a great many years. Often 
Greek and Latin rhymes run through my mind of which I 
have absolutely forgotten, if I ever knew, the meaning. It 
is thirty years since I played tag with boys, but to this 
hour I remember the senseless ' Anor manor monar mike,' 



102 I GO A -FISHING. 

and so on, which we used for choosing a runner ; and 
Latin hymns are always more firmly fixed in my memory 
than English." 

The Doctor. "Philip, you were abusing the 'Dies Ira?' 
the other day." 

Philip. " Not abusing, Doctor ; I was differing from 
you when you spoke of it as the finest of the mediaeval 
hymns." 

The Doctor.. " That is abuse. It's always acknowl- 
edged to be the finest." 

Philip. " So you said." 

The Doctor. " Don't you believe it ?" 

Philip. " I told you no." 

The Doctor. " Why not, man ? Speak out. You aren't 
used to be afraid to express an opinion." 

Philip. " My good fellow, don't bother about my opin- 
ions. You and John agree about the ' Dies Ira?,' and want 
to drag me into a debate." 

Steenburger. " Not a bit of it, Phil ; but you will con- 
fess it is a remarkably strong piece of Latin rhyme ; the 
most musical, in fact, that we have." 

Philip. " I disagree with you ; and, since you will have 
it, I'll give you my opinion in plain words. I think the 
'Dies Iras' has a reputation founded on but little. Its long 
use in the Christian world as a funeral hymn has made it 
almost sacred. But if produced now for the first time it 
would be justly and severely criticised. The Latin is bad, 
of course, because it is mediaeval. The expressions are 
variable — sometimes very strong, sometimes weak, some- 
times worse than weak. The rhymes are abominable." 

Steenburger {starting up). " What do you mean by 
that? They're the finest rhymes conceivable." 

Philip. "John, do me the favor to open that Breviary 



THE DIES 1RJE. 103 

yonder. It's old, and contains an early copy of the ' Dies 
Irae.' Just read the rhyming words of the fourth stanza 
aloud, will you ?" 

Steenburger (reads). "Natura, creatura, responsura." 
Philip. " Do you call those rhyming words ? Now try 
the seventh." 

Steenburger (reads). "Dieturus, rogaturus, seeurus." 
Philip. "Two terminations identical in both stanzas, 
and of course no rhyme. In the eighth you will find tatis 
and tatis ; in the eleventh tionis and tionis ; in the thir- 
teenth audisti rhymes with dedisti ; and the fifteenth is ab- 
solutely destitute of rhyme, the terminations being prcesta, 
questra, and dextra, neither of which rhymes with anoth- 
er. The sixteenth stanza has three lines ending in dictis. 
Now observe, John, Horace could write very good Latin 
without rhyme, but, if he had ever attempted to rhyme, he 
would not have accomplished it by repeating the same 
syllables. For the purposes of rhyme, the 'Dies Irae' is 
not to be praised. As to the Latin, I fancy you don't 
need my criticism. You were always a better Latin schol- 
ar than I, and you know that there is very poor Latin, 
and a very weak construction in the whole hymn. The 
sonorous character of the hymn in a foreign language, 
where the thought fails to follow the sense, alone saves it 
from condemnation. And, I confess, that the English 
translation of the hymn by our lamented friend, Slosson, 
is, to my notion, a better poem than the original Latin. 
And it is the most truthful, as well as the most musical 
translation I know of." 

The Doctor. "The last stanza always bothered me." 
Philip. " I suppose that Thomas de Celano did not 
write that stanza. It appears to have been a later addi- 
tion ; and I incline to think that it has been changed by 



104 I GO A- FISHING. 

some copyist so as to destroy the sense. A single letter 
dropped has apparently weakened the original force of 
the stanza. Read it, John." 
Steenburger (reads) : 

" Lacrymosa dies ilia ! 
Qua resurget ex favilla 
Judicandus homo reus ; 
Huic ergo parce Deus !" 

Philip. " Now, John, tell me what is the force and value 
of that word ergo in the last line ? To my notion, it never 
implied any thing else in Latin than the plain English 
word ' therefore.' But, if you read it therefore, it is a 
senseless word in this line, referring to nothing. The lit- 
eral translation of the stanza, as it now stands, is this : 
' Oh, that day of weeping, in which guilty man shall rise 
from the ashes to be judged : therefore, spare him, oh 
God.' Now this is a very inconsequential sentence. Read 
it in this way : 

' Lacrymosa dies ilia ! 
Quae resurget ex favilla ? 
Judicandus homo reus ! 
Huic ergo parce Deus !' 

There you have an intelligible and a strong passage, 
with full force to your ergo. ' Oh, that mournful day ! 
What shall arise out of the ashes ? Guilty man to be 
judged ! Him therefore spare, oh God.' The idea is, that 
he, and only he, will arise from the terrors of the wrath 
which will consume all earthly things ; and because he is 
the only thing permitted to arise, therefore mercy is im- 
plored for this solitary subject left undestroyed." 

The Doctor. "It sounds reasonable. Go on, Philip." 
Philip. "With what? I've done with the ' Dies.' " 
The Doctor. " What is the best of the Latin hymns in 
your opinion, Effendi ? Give us your ideas on that." 



THE SWAN SONG. 105 

Myself. " I could not answer that question, Doctor. 
In my library, in various volumes, are many hundred medi- 
aeval Latin hymns. Some books of the 15th and 16th cen- 
turies I have preserved only because they contained some- 
times one or two Latin hymns ; many of which, I think, 
must have been unknown to Daniel and to Mone, and 
other collectors, for they are worthy a place in any collec- 
tion. The number is inexhaustible. When I have a fa- 
vorite, it lasts me but a week or two, and another takes its 
place. You could no more say which is the finest, than 
you could say which is the finest of our English hymns. 
One may seem more musical, one more strong or nervous, 
one more sonorous, one more pathetic, one more solemn, 
and so on. But even in each characteristic there are nu- 
merous rivals, and much depends on your own state of 
mind at the time of reading a hymn." 

Steenburger. " Effendi, I heard you once, years ago, 
speak of one which you called 'The Swan Song.' What 
was it ?" 

Myself. "Very curious and very beautiful; the author 
and period unknown ; but it has as much poetic fire and 
imagination in it as any Latin song I know. It is not a 
hymn at all. It is the wail of a dying voluptuary. Queerly 
enough, it reminds me at times of some of the eloquence 
of Augustine. Philip has it. I gave him a copy once." 

Philip. " Yes. You will find it in that book with a red 
back on the third shelf, near the side. That's it. Get it 
out John, and read." 

Steenburger (reads) : 

"CYGNUS EXSPIRANS. 

" Parendum est, cedendum est, 
Claudenda vitas scena ; 
Est jacta sors, me vocat mors, 



106 I GO A-FISHING. 

Haec hora est postrema : 
Valete res, valete spes ; 
Sic finit cantilena. 

" O magna lux, sol, mundi dux. 
Est concedendum fatis ; 
Due lineam eclipticam, 
Mihi luxisti satis : 
Nox incubat ; fax occidit ; 
Jam portum subit ratis. 

" Tu Cynthia argentea, 
Vos, aurei planetae, 
Cum stellulis, ocellulis, 
Nepotibus lucete ; 
Fatalia, letalia 
Me nunciant cometae. 

" Ter centies, ter millies 
Vale, immunde munde ! 
Instabilis et labilis, 
Vale, orbis rotunde ! 
Mendaciis, fallaciis 
Lusisti me abunde." 

The Doctor. "What a superb line that is? Vale im- 
munde munde ! Goon, John." 

Steenburger (reads) : 

" Lucentia, fulgentia 
Gemmis valete tecta, 
Seu marmore, seu ebore 
Supra nubes erecta. 
Ad parvulum me loculum 
Mors urget equis vecta. 

" Lucretiae, quae specie 
Gypsata me cepistis, 
Imagines, voragines ! 
Quas mentem sorbuistis, 
En oculos, heu ! scopulos, 
Extinguit umbra tristis. 



CYGNUS EXSPIRANS. 107 

" Tripudia, diludia, 
Et fescennini chori, 
Quiescite, raucescite ; 
Prseco divini fori, 
Mors, intonat et insonat 
Hunc lessum ; Debes mori. 

" Delicise, lautitiae 
Mensarum cum culina ; 
Cellaria, bellaria, 
Et coronata vina, 
Vos nauseo, dum haurio 
Quem scyphum mors propinat. 

" Facessite, putrescite 
Odores, vestimenta ; 
Rigescite deliciae. 
Libidinum fomenta ! 
Deformium me vermium 
Manent operimenta. 

" O culmina, heu ! fulmina, 
Horum fugax honorum, 
Tarn subito dum subeo 
^Eternitatis domum, 
Ridiculi sunt tituli ; 
Foris et agunt momum. 

" Lectissimi, carissimi 
Amici et sodales. 
Heu! insolens et impudens 
Mors interturbat sales. 
Sat lusibus indulsimus ; 
Extremum dico vale ! 

" Tu denique, corpus, vale, 
Te, te citabit forum ; 
Te conscium, te socium 
Dolorum et gaudiorum ! 
/Equalis nos expectat sors — 
Bonorum vel malorum." 

Steenburger {laying down the book). "Why, that is the 



108 I GO A-FISHING. 

most musical and mournful, as well as the strongest bit 
of Latin rhyme I ever read — and the Latin is good, too — 
that's the oddest thing about it. Who made it ?" 

Philip. "Ignotus." 

Steenburger. "An unknown man? Strange, isn't it, 
that so many men are known who ought to be unknown, 
and so many are unknown that one would give all his old 
boots to know?" 



VI. 

AN EXPLORING EXPEDITION. 

There is a lake over the mountains, some forty miles 
from the Rookery, which I had long desired to see ; but 
I could never persuade a friend to go with me on an ex- 
ploring expedition. A recent extension of the railway 
had made it somewhat more accessible, if I was to give 
credit to the information given me by a baggage-master, 
who assured me that the railroad crossed an old wood- 
road which led in three or four miles to the lake. 

There is, I think, a love of novelty in all anglers. We 
prefer to fish new waters when we can, and it is some- 
times pleasanter to explore, even without success, than to 
take fish in familiar places. New and fine scenery is al- 
ways worth finding. But I could not beat these ideas 
practically into the brain of either Steenburger or Doctor 
Johnston, and I resolved therefore on a solitary expedi- 
tion to the lake. 

I had not then, what I now possess, and strongly rec- 
ommend to roving anglers, a patent India-rubber raft, 
made in two cylinders, with a light frame to sit on. This 
boat or raft, packing in a small compass when not 
"blown up," weighs less than fifty pounds, and can be 
carried on a man's shoulders to any lake or pond. I 
have frequently used it on water never before fished, and 
to reach which it was necessary to climb hills so steep 



IIO I GO A -FISHING. 

and so covered with alternate rock and under-brush that 
two men would have found it quite impossible to carry 
up safely any boat, however light. An axe and an auger 
wherewith to build a raft were therefore essentials to my 
equipment, and these, with some hard bread and sand- 
wiches, and one heavy and one light fly-rod, made up the 
sum total of my luggage. 

Taking the forenoon accommodation train up the road, 
I went forward to find my old informant, the baggage- 
master, or, if not him, some other one who could supple- 
ment my scanty knowledge of the locality I was seeking. 

Luckily there was a man who said he knew all about 
it, and, after riding forty miles or so, the conductor stop- 
ped his train at a road crossing in the woods, I tumbled 
out, and civilization at once departed from me, drawn by 
the power of steam. 

It had been a sudden idea, and the realization was 
somewhat discouraging. Alone in the woods, with sun- 
dry traps in the way of luggage, and with no other guide 
than the words of the confident individual I had met on 
the cars, who said that the lake lay at the foot of a hill 
to which he pointed across the forest, I set out, and aft- 
er a half-mile tramp came on the traces of a clearing, 
and, soon descending into a hollow, found a saw-mill. 
Two men who were running it were evidently astonished 
at the appearance of a traveler, but they very good-nat- 
uredly offered advice, to wit, that, if one wanted trout-' 
fishing, he could find it then and there in the mill-dam, 
but that if he went to the lake he would find no trout, 
for nobody ever could take trout there except through 
the ice in the winter. 

" What size do they take them, then ?" 

" Oh, sometimes five or six pounds." 



THE UNKNOWN LAKE. I I I 

This was the same story I had heard at a distance, 
and it confirmed my hopes. I chatted a while with the 
sawyers, and tried the contents of their pond. A few 
casts brought up some small trout, and at length a very 
decent fish, perhaps a pound in weight, rose to the scar- 
let ibis. Landing him, and leaving him with the others 
for the use of the men, who had never before seen fly- 
fishing, and were astonished at the process, I pushed on 
in the afternoon toward the unknown lake or pond. The 
road became less a road and more a path as it ascended 
hill after hill, winding and- pleasant, but always tending 
upward. At last it opened on a large clearing where 
stood a ruined log house, deserted long ago, and a tol- 
erably decent barn, in which there was a small quantity 
of dry hay. This was an unexpected luxury, for I had 
calculated on a night in camp. I took possession of the 
only tenantable end of the log house, deposited my pack- 
ages, and resolved to make this my head-quarters, since 
it was evident the lake was distant not over a mile at 
most. Then taking a light rod I plunged into the forest, 
and in less than half an hour emerged on the banks of 
the lake. It lacked an hour of sunset, and there was 
but little time for the examination of the shores. Boat 
there was none. The unbroken forest surrounded the 
sheet of water. There was no time this evening to con- 
struct a raft, and if I was to have trout for supper, it 
must be by casting from the shore, and so I went to work 
at once. 

In visiting a new lake like this, the chances are always 
against the fisherman. He knows nothing of the special 
haunts of the trout, and can form no opinion of the shape 
of the bottom of the pond — an idea of which is generally 
necessary to guide one in looking for this fish. The 



112 I GO A -FISHING. 

safest rule is therefore to seek for the main inlet, and, 
if the water is here found shoal, to wade out far enough 
to get a cast over deeper water. Beginning on this rule, 
I had a long hunt for the inlet, and it was after sunset 
before I found it. It happened fortunately that there 
was an accumulation here of old drift-wood, well packed 
together, which supported me, and I had a good clear 
back cast. For ten or fifteen minutes it was all vain 
work. Nothing broke the surface which had life. The 
gloom began to settle on the lake. It grew cold withal, 
and the wind was sharp. I frankly confess that by this 
time I wanted fish because I was hungry. If supper 
were to be confined to three or four pieces of hard bread, 
it was not to be regarded with any earnest longings and 
joyous anticipations. If, on the other hand, I could look 
to the rich salmon-colored meat of a trout as waiting me 
in the old log house, it was something worth thinking 
about. 

And as I thought about it, he rose with a heavy rush, 
and slashed the tail-fly with his own broad tail and went 
down again. Cast after cast, and he would not rise again. 
So I fell back at last on the old white moth, and, taking 
off all the other flies, cast this alone, in the twilight which 
was now almost darkness. He came up at it at the first 
cast, and took it, head on, following the fly from behind. 
It is not often on still water that a trout takes a fly with 
his mouth before striking it with his tail ; but they some- 
times do it on a white fly in the evening, and from this 
fact it seems likely that they regard it as an animal mov- 
ing in the water and not as a fly at all. 

He took it and turned down, then, as he felt the hook, 
swayed off with a long, steady surge, and circled half 
around me. Supper was tolerably certain now, and my 



SALT. 



113 



appetite at once rose. In less than five minutes I had 
him, a good, solid three-pounder, in the landing-net, and 
at once struck a bee line for the log house in the clearing. 

The cabin was nothing to boast of as a shelter. The 
roof was tight over the end opposite the chimney, but the 
windows were destitute of glass, and the breeze, which 
had sprung up freshly before I left the lake, was talking 
loudly to itself inside of the place as I approached it. 
There was plenty of wood around the old hut, and in ten 
minutes I had the chimney blazing at a terrible rate. 
Fire-light is as much of a polisher in-doors as moonlight 
outside. It smoothes down all the roughness of an in- 
terior. It reddened the walls of the cabin and covered 
them with dancing images. I had nothing in the way of 
eatables except the trout, hard bread, and some salt. The 
salt was the great article. It was on the faith of that salt 
that I had ventured on the expedition. With a few pinch- 
es of salt and a good rod or gun, one may live luxuriously 
for a while, if he have luck. Without the salt — only im- 
agine it. You may not think much of it as a thing to 
possess, but just reverse the picture and imagine fish and 
game in abundance without it, and you may thereby find 
in some measure what it is worth. 

I recall oftentimes a scene at Wady Halfe where the 
palms of Ethiopia bear golden fruit, but where salt is 
worth more than golden dates. There I have bought 
bushels of luxurious fruit for a single handful of the con- 
densed brine from the far-off sea. 

One half of the trout was turning before the blaze, hung 
on the small end of a birch sapling • the other half was 
reserved for breakfast, for it was by no means certain that 
any other food was to be found. A pile of hay from the 
barn made a soft bed in the sheltered end of the room. 

H 



114 l G0 A- FISHING. 

While the fire burned I mused, and before the musings 
had assumed form the trout was cooked, and then my 
supper was ready and eaten, the bed looked more and 
more inviting, and by nine or ten o'clock I was sound 
asleep in the corner. 

Morning found me sleeping. The sun and air were 
streaming in at the window-frames innocent of sash or 
glass. But while the question of breakfast was under 
discussion, a voice came in by the same avenues with the 
sunshine and wind, singing a cheery song, and I saw the 
tall form of one of the sawyers of the mill swinging along 
toward the wood in the direction of the lake. He pulled 
up at a hail and turned to the cabin. 

" Glad to see you lively this morning," he said in a hearty 
voice. " I thought I'd come over and bring you suthin' 
to eat ; expected to find you in camp, down along the 
pond." Then, entering the cabin and seeing the half of 
the last night's trout hanging before the fire — " Well, you 
seem to ha' taken care of yourself. You don't say you 
got that feller last night with one of them little poles o' 
yourn?" 

We made a substantial meal together at once, and the 
best thanks that could be given my friend were visible in 
the justice done to his corn-bread and hard eggs. He 
had come three miles across the country on this hospi- 
table errand, and was delighted when I proposed to him 
to spend the day on the lake, and promised to go home , 
with him in the evening. 

The first work was the building of a raft. To the un- 
initiated it is often a puzzle how rafts are constructed 'by 
fishermen in the forests, and possibly there are not many 
sportsmen who have regarded an axe and an auger as 
parts of an outfit. The two things are essential to a for- 



THE YELLOW FLY. 115 

est expedition, and in going to fish an unknown sheet of 
water one might almost as well leave his rod behind him 
as these tools. There are ways of getting on without the 
auger, but a raft lashed together with withes is a danger- 
ous craft. I have had such a one part with me in mid- 
lake, while I swam ashore with my rod in my hand, los- 
ing even the fish I had taken. In the present case I had 
both tools. The construction of the raft was very simple. 
Two pine-trees supplied six logs, each about a foot in di- 
ameter, which were rolled into the water and floated side 
by side, a few inches apart. Across these smaller tim- 
bers were laid, the axe shaping them down flat where 
wooden pegs were driven in auger-holes through them 
into the heavy logs. It was but little over an hour's 
work to complete it, for the timber was at hand in good 
size and quantity. Then we covered the raft with balsam 
boughs, to stand or sit or lie down on, and a couple of 
long poles finished the furniture of the vessel on which 
we pushed out at the inlet of the lake. The day was so 
much more beautiful than the previous one that the lake 
appeared like a new place, and the trout were rising on 
the surface here and there in a way which indicated that 
the warm sunshine had brought out some small flies, in- 
visible to the eye at a distance, but satisfactory as indi- 
cating that the fish were on the feed. It was nearly ten 
o'clock when I began casting. But nothing rose to my 
flies till I had changed them twice or oftener, and had on 
at length three small gnats, a dun, a yellow, and a black, 
and then came the first strike at the yellow, a half-pound 
fish soon killed. Another at the yellow again, a some- 
what larger fish, gave me some slight work, and a third 
took the yellow once more, and thereupon I changed : the 
dropper yellow, the tail-fly yellow, and intermediate a 



Il6 I GO A- FISHING. 

small scarlet ibis. The first cast made with this new 
bank, as some men call the arrangement, cost me the 
scarlet fly. A large fish took the dropper, and at the 
same instant another struck the ibis. They headed in 
opposite directions, and the very stroke of the two parted 
the slender thread. I landed but one on that cast, and 
only once after that had two at the same time, and then 
saved them both. 

The sport continued good till about one o'clock, and 
then ceased. The breeze rippled the water, the flies were 
increasing in number in the warm sunshine, but feeding 
time was over and the fish went down. I have seen the 
same thing often on other waters. 

The object of the expedition was accomplished. There 
were trout in the lake — they would rise to the fly. Over 
a dozen beautiful large fish, and nearly another dozen 
which ran below a half pound each, were fair evidence of 
the contents of this water. Six of the smaller fish had 
been taken with bait by my friend, the sawyer. He had 
cut a birch rod, and with hook and line which I sup- 
plied, and the fin of a trout for bait, which he kept con- 
stantly moving near the bottom of the lake, he had cap- 
tured a half-dozen fair-sized fish. 

So we left the raft to drift toward the leeward side of 
the lake, and started for the log house in the clearing ; 
and thence, carrying heavy weight, we trudged over the 
hills to the home of my friend of the mill. 

It is one of the most pleasant incidents, not uncommon 
either, in the life of a roving angler, to find the hospitality 
of a warm American country home. There is no other 
country in the world where such incidents can happen, 
for nowhere else are there outlying farms and homes in 
the forest, in which one can meet with that measure of 



A FARM-HOUSE STORY. 117 

refinement and cultivation which marks American farm- 
ers' families. Books, magazines, and newspapers find 
their way into the remotest settlements, and it is a pleas- 
ing fact that newness or freshness in the literature is not 
an essential to its enjoyment. Life glides on so evenly 
that there is no thirst for novelty, no excitement which 
requires peculiar stimulus. It is the custom of many an- 
glers whom I know to gather in the autumn all their old. 
magazines and literature of various kinds, and send it to 
such distant homes in the forest, where it helps the winter 
through, and where the giver finds, and is sometimes glad 
to find it in the spring. 

My sawyer friend brought me to such a house. The 
fire-light was shining from the kitchen hearth through the 
open door as we approached, and an old woman, with a 
bright and sunny smile on her face, welcomed her son 
and his guest on the threshold. The two lived together 
here, in a snug frame house, low down in the valley, and 
only a half-mile from the open country where was a small 
village and a church. " If it were daylight, you could see 
the church," said the old lady, " but as it is you can only 
see the lights in Alice Brand's farm-house." 

And later in the evening, after we had dined, or supped, 
royally, and were sitting before the hearth talking of this, 
that, and the other thing, the old lady told me a story 
about Alice Brand's farm-house. 

Forty years ago Stephen Brand was a farmer in the 
valley near the church, well to do in the world, and, as he 
hoped, with some treasure laid up where it could not cor- 
rupt. At all events Stephen was a light in the church, 
and had been a judge, or something of the sort, in his 
county. For a long time the stout old man had served 
his country, and he was beginning to be weary. 



Il8 I GO A -FISHING. 

He had one son ; but Walter Brand, the child of his 
old age, was a wanderer, and his wife Alice, the daughter 
of the clergyman, lived in the old house with Stephen, and 
cared for him and superintended the domestic duties of 
the home-farm. 

Alice had been a favorite in the village before her mar- 
riage, and most persons thought well of the match ; but 
Walter was a restless boy, and although sole heir to his 
father's wealth, which was not small, and although he had 
a gentle wife at home that loved him truly and fondly, he 
yet preferred to rove, and seldom returned to the old 
place under the elms. 

They had one child. He was a boy, and from his birth 
was so like the old man that you were startled and almost 
frightened at the strange resemblance. There was an old 
look on the child's face that grew tenfold older every year 
that he lived, and when he was seven, you might have 
taken his countenance for that of a man of seventy. He 
was hopelessly deformed. This sorrowful truth began to 
force itself on the mother's mind before he was two years 
old, and at length there could be no doubt of the fact. 
Like all deformed children of tender-hearted parents, he 
was far more dear to his mother on this very account, and 
she cherished him as a very gem lost out of heaven and 
found by them. And such he was. There was a depth 
of quiet beauty in his childish soul that passed all sound- 
ing. No one seemed to penetrate its mysteries except 
the old man, his grandfather, and he would sit for hours 
looking into the large black eyes of the boy, and appar- 
ently gazing into the very soul of his pet. They grew to 
each other. The old man for his sake came half way 
back to his childhood and met him — for the boy seemed 
to be half way to old age, even at six years old. Alice 



A FARM-HOUSE STORY. 



II 9 



was happy in that growing love, and watched them with 
eyes full of tears at the thought that ere long the old man 
must go down to silence, and the boy live on alone. 

Sometimes they would walk together, and sit down un- 
der a tree on the river bank and talk. No one knew 
what they talked of in such moments, but doubtless the 
grandfather had visions of the world he was entering, and 
communicated them to the boy. And so years traveled 
along, and they all grew older together, and when once in 
a while Walter came back, the" house was happy. 

But a change came. The cheek of Stephen Brand grew 
paler and paler as he grew more feeble, and he felt that 
the hour was approaching when he must go away by the 
dark road ; and the boy's life was so knitted to that of his 
grandfather, that he too seemed visibly to fail from day 
to day. It was a curious circumstance, and did not fail 
to attract the attention of the family and the neighbor- 
hood, and wise old women prophesied that the boy would 
not outlive the old man. 

And now the two talked constantly and steadily from 
morning till night and late into the night. Sometimes 
they were seated by the five in the old hearth, sometimes 
in the large chairs facing each other that stood in Stephen's 
room, and as the spring advanced they sat sometimes 
under the large elm that was near the well, and oftener 
still on the river bank by the spring. And their conver- 
sation was no secret, but was of the high and blessed 
promises for the future, of the light that shone all along 
that otherwise dark sad road they were traveling. Alice 
wept in secret every day, but never let them see her tears. 
She went cheerfully about her household work, and in the 
dull routine of a farmer's life sought to forget the bitter- 
ness of the coming separation. 



120 I GO A -FISHING. 

It came at length. One pleasant morning in the sum- 
mer, when the birds sang with unusual cheer, and sky and 
earth seemed to come close together in their affection, the 
inseparable two walked feebly out together, and down to 
the old seat on the river bank. Alice was alarmed about 
them, and followed them herself, but when she saw them 
seated safely she returned and worked sadly on until 
noon. But they did not return as usual, and she hasten- 
ed down the pathway across the field, and sought them 
by the spring. But they were not there. A wild terror 
seized on her, and she sank trembling on the seat beside 
the old man's hat which lay on it. A brief search reveal- 
ed the sad story. The boy had sought something in the 
edge of the water, and in his feebleness had fallen. The 
old man had tried to rescue him, and perished with him. 
The two were found together, and together carried to the 
old farm-house, out of which the lights had now forever 
gone. 

" Ah," said the old lady, " I've heard the passing-bell 
many, many times in the valley, but I never heard it 
sound so strange as it did that afternoon when it came 
up the valley and I counted it. It was ever so long be- 
fore I got to eighty-seven, and then I knew that Stephen 
Brand was gone, and I was just thinking how lonesome 
poor little Steve would be, when it struck again. Upon 
my word, sir, it almost knocked me off my chair; and 
when I counted fourteen, I just sat here trembling all 
over, and then I fell to crying like any child." 

" Mrs. Brand still lives on the farm, I suppose ?" 

" Alice, you mean ? Oh yes. The death of the two 
who had been so close to her was a heavy affliction, and 
she was pretty much broken down ; but it brought a 
blessing that repaid her, for Walter came home at once, 



GHOSTS. 121 

and somehow their old love sprang up again quite fresh, 
and he did not go away, and they settled down into a 
happy sort of life. They're living in the old house now. 
It's Alice's, for the old man left it to her and not to Wal- 
ter. He'd be glad to see you, sir. It isn't often he 
hears from his old friends in the city. She's my cousin, 
Alice is. Sam, why don't you walk down to the farm 
and see Walter ? It'll do him good, for he's getting old 
and growing stiff. Sam, you're not afraid of ghosts ?" 

" No, no, I thank you. I'm too content with your hos- 
pitality to go away from it to-night," I said, in reply to 
Sam's proffer of an escort for the call. But I noticed 
that it was the allusion to ghosts that had started him 
out of his easy seat, and I looked for an explanation. 

" It's not strange," said my hostess, " that superstitious 
people should have made a ghost story out of the curious 
life and death of the old man and his grandson. But 
for a man six feet high and well educated as Sam is, I 
call it absurd." 

" Sam believes it ?" 

" Sam declares he saw them. The people used to say 
they two haunted the side of the brook. Sam goes fish- 
ing for trout sometimes of an evening down the hollow, 
and he declares he saw them one night, the tall old man 
and the little boy, moving along in the edge of the bushes 
and looking and pointing toward the old house. But as 
to its being ghosts he saw I never believed it, for I al- 
ways thought the ghosts were Tim Stevens and his boy 
on their way to steal Alice Brand's chickens. She gen- 
erally misses some about the time the ghosts are around." 



VII. 

THE ST. REGIS WATERS IN OLD TIMES. 

My first knowledge of the St. Regis waters was in 
i860. The sun was approaching the forest horizon, but 
had not yet reached it. All the day we had been asking 
of the people the distance we had yet to travel, and nev- 
er was there a country in which the people knew as little 
about it, or in which opinions so much differed. No two 
persons agreed in any instance, and we began at length 
to ask every one we met, old and young, for the mere 
sake of having a laugh at the new numbers we knew we 
should get in reply. 

Thus at Bloomingdale, we were assured by a man, who 
said he ought to know, that the distance to Paul Smith's 
was exactly eleven miles, and then, when we had driven 
about three miles, we were told by a farmer in the fields 
that we had yet twelve miles to drive, and a hundred 
rods farther we met a man who told us it was thirteen ! 
The next inquiry was of a bright eyed little girl in front 
of a cottage, who answered that it was nine miles to Paul 
Smith's ; and we drove on patiently across the long 
swamp, across a barren and desolate sweep of country, 
and ascending a little hill we re-entered the forest. 

It was profoundly still in the deep shades through 
which we passed. The spirit of silence and repose 
seemed to have taken possession of the woodland, and 



PAUL SMITHS. 123 

the sharp crack of a dry stick under the wheels of our 
wagon appeared a rude invasion of the domain of quiet. 

The horses were pretty well used up. It was then 
fifty-five miles from Port Kent to Paul Smith's, according 
to the most approved authorities, and this is a hard day's 
work for horses not used to the road. They lounged idly 
down the wood-road through which we were now passing, 
but soon pricked up their ears as they saw through the 
trees the gleam of a barn, and then put on the old speed, 
for a little, to bring us up to the door of Paul Smith's 
house on Follansbee Pond. 

Our welcome was warm and hearty. Paul Smith's 
name is not Paul, but Apollos A. Smith, and the other 
name is a way of pronouncing it short. I have used it 
because he is best known by it. It was then about two 
years since he first broke the ground on the bank of this 
lake to build the house he occupies. It was up to that 
time a wild spot, as it still is. Selecting, with good taste 
and judgment, a wooded bank where tall pines stretch a 
hundred feet above the shore, he had hewn away only so 
many as were in the way of his building, and left the rest 
standing in primeval grandeur around the house. The 
scene was therefore one of rare beauty — one to be 
dreamed of, but seldom to be seen. The pond, which is 
one of the St. Regis chain or series, is about three miles 
long, and three quarters of a mile broad. They call it 
now the Lower St. Regis. The upper end of the pond 
connects by a narrow river (on nearly the same level) 
with the Spitfire Pond, and this by a short stream with 
St. Regis Lake, over which the St. Regis hill stands up, 
the highest hill among the lakes (for the Adirondack 
hills are off to the south of us). From the front piazza 
of Smith's we can see the sides and summit of the St. 



124 I G0 A- FISHING. 

Regis, apparently three or four miles distant. From the 
summit of the hill you can count more than seventy lakes 
lying around you. The water-flow is from the St. Regis 
into the Spitfire, thence into the Follansbee, or Lower 
St. Regis, and then by the St. Regis River northward to 
the St. Lawrence. 

Having selected this point with so much judgment, Mr. 
Smith has been careful not to spoil nature by attempt- 
ing any improvement on the forest and lake. The two 
are here, and what more do you want for beauty of scen- 
ery? 

We were somewhat chilled when we reached the door, 
but the warm welcome was itself sufficient to make us 
comfortable, and I would not go into the house when that 
sun was going down in such splendor. So I only ran in 
to see the more delicate portion of my party taken care 
of, and then I demanded whether it was possible to take 
any trout before dark. 

Stephen Turner replied to my question. One of the 
oldest of the forest guides, a warm-hearted old man, whom, 
if I were going for a week or a month's sojourn into the 
forest, I would select as the best of company, thoroughly 
acquainted with his business, and withal a great talker 
and a fair listener. 

From him I learned that brook trout were abundant in 
one part of the pond, close by the house ; and as the twi- 
light was at hand, I was resolved to make a few casts 
that very evening. So we took a boat and pushed off 
into the blue and crimson splendor which filled the basin 
of the placid lake. A hundred strokes of the paddle sent 
the light boat around the end of a rocky point covered 
with lofty wood, and we coasted the edge of a large tam- 
arack swamp through which a cold stream of spring wa- 



EVENING ON FOLLANSBEE. 125 

ter found its way down to the lake. The mouth of the 
stream was wide, and a dozen rods or so from the shore 
there were masses of lily pads growing from the mud 
which the stream brought into the lake. Between the 
pads and the mouth of the stream we dropped anchor, and 
I threw my flies over the surface of the clear water. 

It was long before we had a rise — so long that I began 
to doubt the tremendous stories with which my old friend 
Turner had been amusing me. I changed my flies. I 
led with a yellow and gold, and followed him with a plain 
brown ; and then I led with a scarlet ibis, and followed 
with a hog's wool gray ; and then I changed and changed 
again, trying large flies and small gnats, hackles and im- 
itation grubs ; and then I gave up casting, and, lying back 
in the stern of my little boat, watched the splendor of 
the sky from which the sun had gone a little before. 

The day had died most gloriously. The " sword of the 
sun," that had lain across the forest, was withdrawn and 
sheathed. There was a stillness on land and water and 
in the sky that seemed like the presence of an invisible 
majesty. Eastward, the lofty pine-trees rested their green 
tops in an atmosphere whose massive blue seemed to sus- 
tain and support them. Westward, the rosy tints along 
the horizon deepened into crimson around the base of the 
St. Regis, and faded into black toward the north. 

No sign of life, human or inhuman, was any where visi- 
ble or audible, except within the little boat where we two 
floated ; and peace, that peace that reigns where no man 
is — that peace that never dwells in the abodes of men — 
here held silent and omnipotent sway. 

But a change was coming. The first premonition of it 
was a sound in the tree-tops, that sighing, soughing of the 
pines which you have so often heard. At all times and 



126 I GO A -FISHING. 

places it is a strange and a melancholy sound, but no- 
where so much so as in the deep forest. It is at first a 
heavy, distant breath, like the deep respiration, or rather 
the expiration of many weary men — nay, rather of wom- 
en, for it is gentle and low. But it rises into the sound 
of a great grief, the utterance of innumerable sighs ; and 
now sobs interrupt it, and low wails of single sorrow that 
have no comparison with other woe, and that will not be 
appeased by any sympathies. Just such a sound, had you 
been on the hill-side above Zahleh the night after the 
Druses made havoc of the Maronites in that city of Leb- 
anon, you would have heard floating up the heights of the 
mountain from the doomed city : the sounds of sorrow in 
a thousand homes ; the mournful cry of the women and 
children ; and now and then the sob of the dying, gur- 
gling out with blood. Just such a sound I once heard, or 
thought I heard, in the night, when I lay awake on the 
east side of the Rhine, and for an hour on the western 
side the thunder of cannon ceased, and I could hear the 
agony of Strasburg, beleaguered by the German hosts, the 
low moan of her agony ascending above the spire of her 
holy minster. 

But while I listened to the wind in the pine-trees, the 
gloom had increased, and a ripple came stealing over the 
water. There was a flapping of one of the lily pads as 
the first waves struck them ; and then, as the breeze 
passed over us, I threw two flies on the black ripple. 
There was a swift rush — a sharp dash and plunge in the 
water. Both were struck at the instant, and then I had 
work before me that forbade my listening to the voices of 
the pines. It took five minutes to kill my fish — two splen- 
did specimens, weighing each a little less than two pounds. 
Meantime the rip had increased, and the breeze came 



THE LAUGH OF THE LOON. 127 

fresh and steady. It was too dark now to see the oppo- 
site shore, and the fish rose at every cast ; and when I 
had a half dozen of the same sort, and one that lacked 
only an ounce of being full four pounds, we pulled up the 
killeck and paddled homeward around the wooded point. 
The moon rose, and the scene on the lake now became 
magically beautiful. The mocking laugh of the loon was 
the only cause of complaint in that evening of splendor. 
Who can sit in the forest in such a night, when earth and 
air are full of glory — when the soul of the veriest block- 
head must be elevated, and when a man begins to feel 
as if there were some doubt whether he is even a little 
lower than the angels — who, I say, can sit in such a 
scene, and hear that fiendish laugh of the loon, and fail to 
remember Eden and the tempter. Did you ^ever hear 
that laugh ? If so, you know what I mean. 

That mocking laugh was in my ears as I reeled in my 
line, and, lying back in the bottom of the canoe, looked 
up at the still and glorious sky. " Oh, that I could live 
just here forever," I said, "in this still forest home, by this 
calm lake, in this undisturbed companionship of earth 
and sky. Oh that I could leave the life of labor among 
men, and rest serenely here as my sun goes down the 
sky." 

"Ho! ho! ha! ha!" laughed the loon across the lake, 
under the great rock of the old Indian. 

Well, the loon was right ; and I was, like a great many 
other men, mistaken in fancying a hermit's life — or, what 
I rather desired, a life in the country with a few friends — 
as preferable to life among crowds of men. There is a 
certain amount of truth, however, in the idea that man 
made cities, and God made the country. 

Doubtless we human creatures were intended to live 



128 I GO A- FISHING. 

upon the products of the soil, and the animal food which 
our strength or sagacity would enable us to procure. It 
was intended that each man should, for himself and those 
dependent on him, receive from the soil of the earth such 
sustenance and clothing as he could compel it to yield. 
But we have invented a system of covering miles square 
of ground with large flat stones, or piles of brick and mor- 
tar, so as to forbid the product of any article of nourish- 
ment, forbidding grass or grain or flower to spring up, 
since we need the space for our inter-communication with 
each other, in the ways of traffic and accumulating wealth, 
while we buy for money, in what we call markets, the 
food and clothing we should have procured for ourselves 
from our common mother earth. Doubtless all this is a 
perversion of the original designs of Providence. The 
perversion is one that sprang from the accumulation of 
wealth by a few, to the exclusion of the many, which, in 
time, resulted in the purchase of the land by the few, and 
the supply of food in return for articles of luxury manu- 
factured by artisans who were not cultivators of the soil. 
But who would listen now to an argument in favor of a re- 
turn to the nomadic style of life ? I am not going to give 
you one, and I am not at all inclined to think it advisable 
for every one ; but in a still, delicious evening like that, 
I might be pardoned for a sigh when I remembered the 
workman that I was, and bethought me of the lounger that 
I might be. 

What, man ! Would you join the old cant that "it is 
great to work ;" that " it is a man's duty to work ;" that 
" work is prayer ;" that laborare est adorare ? Well, sir, 
there was a day when I thought so too; but, by my faith, 
I don't believe a word of it now. I believe I was made 
to vegetate, to grow and expand, and do something for 



HERMIT LIFE. 120 

other people, and a great deal for myself and my own ; 
but not to work any harder than is absolutely consistent 
with comfort. I don't believe in going to bed early, nor 
always in rising early — especially in town. I don't be- 
lieve in hardening my muscles, or making iron out of the 
flesh God gave me, by gymnastics, or what you call exer- 
cise. I don't believe in wasting the physique which I 
have by any extraordinary efforts "for the good of the 
race." I don't believe in letting alone coffee and tobacco 
because the doctors are positive that they ought to be 
and are injurious to the health, or because I believe that 
they are so myself. The argument of health, which seeks 
to prolong life by selecting articles of food which are 
hurtful, and articles which are safe and wholesome, is no 
argument to me. 

But where am I wandering ? The loon was laughing at 
me when I said to myself that I could be happy in a for- 
est home. I suppose the loon meant to intimate that I 
would be tired of it in a few weeks or months ; and per- 
haps it was so. 

As I sat that night on the piazza of Paul SmifhVhouse 
and looked out on the exceeding beauty of the moonlit 
lake, and heard again and again that laugh across the 
water, I began to recall the histories of hermits who had 
lived and died in forest and wilderness, and then Turner 
or some one told me the story of Follansbee, after whom 
the pond was named ; and this, in fact, was a story of 
hermit life, somewhat exaggerated in the repetitions it has 
undergone. But when that story was told, and another 
and another, I sat alone ; and my thoughts went wander- 
ing over the distant hills to the abodes of the hermits of 
ancient times, and then I recalled a story of one of them, 
and told it to my listeners — a story of the old faith. 

I 



130 I GO A -FISHING. 

Laugh at it as we will, deride it as we may, the ages 
that we call dark were ages of faith in something that 
may well contrast with this cold, utilitarian age of ours. 
And when we read or hear the life -histories of the men 
of those centuries, we learn that men could live and 
die for a faith, as no man in this age knows how. I say, 
they were men in those ages. We may well shrink in the 
comparison of ourselves with them. We may well hide 
our stories of sacrifice when we read theirs. What if they 
were ignorant, what if they were superstitious ? What if 
they did waste treasures untold and lives uncounted in 
vain battle for a block of wood they called a cross, and 
an empty cave they called Christ's Sepulchre ? What if 
all this was folly ? Yet, oh my friend, I beseech you to 
take a thousand of those men standing before the walls 
of Jerusalem, with closed helmets, and hands griped firm 
on sword or battle-axe, while through their lips comes 
the stern cry of destiny, " God wills it" — Deus vult. I 
say, compare them with a thousand men of our own city, 
clamorous around our City Hall for a street to be opened 
through a grave-yard, an old resting-place of the beloved 
dead of the last century, or any other barbarianism of 
the age in which you and I live. Do this, and then tell 
me, if you dare, that the men of the Middle Ages were less 
noble than we. A thousand years hence, when the world 
shall have advanced to another standing-place whence 
to look back on these centuries, the men of the world will 
think this nineteenth century blacker than night, com- 
pared with their notions of what constitutes light ; and 
yet, measured by standards in the hands of the immor- 
tals, it may be that we shall be found as light as they, and 
the ages gone by will not be so profoundly gloomy. 
I was going to tell that story of the old time, but on re- 



THE ECHO. 131 

flection this is neither the time nor place for it ; and so, 
though I did remember and relate it, sitting on the piazza 
in the moonlight, I will spare you the recital. 

There is an echo across the lake which is more beauti- 
ful in its effect than any thing I remember to have heard. 
The distance is nearly a mile. The shore opposite is 
densely wooded. This forest returns as perfect waves of 
sound as if it were a wall of rock. The distance over 
and back requires about ten seconds, and hence a long 
bugle note, or a succession of notes on the horn, such as 
the opening bar of " Anacreon in Heaven," or " The Star- 
Spangled Banner," may be given on the piazza, and a 
few seconds of silence follow, and then out of the distant 
forest, across the lake, the "notes come back with a sweet- 
ness that can not be imagined. 

Long before this I ought to have been in bed. I had 
ridden fifty miles, and then caught trout till after dark ; 
and yet I sat till midnight on the piazza, and felt no sen- 
sation of fatigue as yet. The return to the forest was 
like wine to me. 

One who has in former years lived much in the woods, 
forms a stronger attachment for that life than a man ever 
forms for any other. The affection which we have for 
the companions of our solitude is very strong. It is the 
same principle on which prisoners have loved toads and 
spiders, or even inanimate objects. Hence, when I find 
myself in the woods, the old sights and sounds come back 
with such force that I can not tear myself away. Even 
after the other occupants of the house had gone to their 
beds and were sound asleep in their several places, I 
walked down to the beach, and, pushing off one of the 
canoe-like boats, paddled away into the moonlight on the 
water, and then lay still, listening to the old familiar 



132 I GO A -FISHING. 

sounds — the wind, the short yelp of a dreaming hound in 
some camp, the rush of a hungry trout seeking his food 
in the night-time, and constantly that laugh of the loon, 
varied now and then by his long, mournful cry. 

Late as it was when I slept, I awoke with daybreak, 
and paddling one of the canoe-like boats around to the 
bay where I had taken the trout the evening before, threw 
my fly and took a couple of splendid specimens of the 
Follansbee inhabitants. I wanted no more, and took no 
more, but again lay in the bottom of the boat and watched 
the changes of the moving sky. 

While I was thus lying, waiting for whatever sounds of 
the forest and sky T might hear, two large herons came 
wheeling downward around me, and lit on the drift-wood 
at the edge of the tamarack swamp through which the 
Weller brook comes down to the lake. Stalking along 
from log to log, or plunging their long legs in the oozy 
swamp, they paid no attention to my presence, but occu- 
pied themselves with their own fishing arrangements, as 
if the wilderness were their own. 

A plunge in the swamp startled them, and they raised 
their long necks and looked into the recesses which my 
eye could not penetrate. Another plunge, and they qui- 
etly resumed their fishing, while I looked the more ea- 
gerly • for if the birds were undisturbed by such a noise, 
I knew that the maker of it must be one of the forest in- 
habitants from whom they had nothing to fear. Nor was 
I wrong, for in a minute or so I saw a bush staake, and 
another, and another, then a buck made his appearance, 
quietly sauntering along, as fearless of harm as the her- 
ons. I was as motionless as breathing would allow ; he 
did not see me till he was at the edge of the lake. Then 
indeed he caught sight of me, and pausing like a statue 



DEER -SHOOTING. 1 33 

one instant, he sprang into the air and was away, dash- 
ing, plunging, hurry-scurry through the swamp as far as I 
could hear him. 

The Adirondack woods abound in deer. It is an easy 
matter to kill a half-dozen in a day, and they frequently 
do it at a place like Smith's. But I am compelled to 
say that some of the Adirondack hunters would not be 
admitted into the society of hunters of which my an- 
cient friend and ally Black, of Owl Creek cabin, was the 
leader, and for this reason : they butcher the deer here 
instead of shooting them in a fair way. Some still-hunt- 
ing is done, but the principal part of the hunting here 
consists in driving the deer into the lakes, and drowning 
them in the most abominable manner. I can see your 
flush of indignation, my old friend, when you read this ac- 
count of the way they treat our game in the forests of 
Northern New York, and so thoroughly was I disgusted 
with it that I declined taking any share in any of the 
hunts. I could see it done, sitting on the piazza of 
Smith's house ; and this was the way of it. 

The dogs were sent out with one of the hunters, who 
crossed the lake and went over to the Upper St. Regis 
Lake, putting the dogs out on the side toward the Fol- 
lansbee. Here they soon found the scent and opened on 
it, and the music came to us across three miles of inter- 
vening forest. As soon as they opened, the hunters at 
Smith's, three sportsmen, each with a guide, got into their 
boats and paddled off on the Follansbee Pond, taking po- 
sitions close under the shores on three sides. 

An hour passed, during which the dogs were heard at 
intervals ; then suddenly one of the guides caught sight 
of a black spot on the surface of the pond, moving not 
unlike a loon. It required a sharp eye to see it in the 



134 I GO A-FISHING. 

rip that covered the surface, and no one but a hunter 
would have known that it was a deer, swimming with the 
tip of his nose and half his head out of water — or her 
nose and her head, for in this case it proved to be a doe. 

The sportsman in the boat with the guide who had first 
seen the game had, as it turned out, a rifle that would 
not go off, and, after vain snapping, the guide paddled 
swiftly up and overtook the frightened doe, who, as soon 
as she saw her pursuer, had turned for the shore she had 
left. 

The sportsman intercepted her flight, and then pro- 
ceeded to belabor the poor animal's head with a paddle, 
and force her under water. The battle was by no means 
well fought on his side, and the guide was obliged con- 
stantly to use his paddle in the water and "surround" the 
poor frightened doe, who was steadily nearing the shore 
notwithstanding all his efforts. 

But now the other two boats came up and joined the 
fray, and the murder was accomplished more artistically. 
One guide dashed in adroitly and seized the body of the 
doe so as to throw her up in the water, and enable him 
to catch her by the tail. This was necessary to prevent 
her sinking when the other should dispatch her ; for at 
certain seasons, and in certain conditions of the venison, 
the deer will not float in water, but goes down like a 
stone. 

This point secured, he held her by the tail, and then it 
was easy for his sportsman to blow her brains out with 
his rifle. 

This, on my word, is the manner in which nine deer 
out of ten that are killed in the Adirondacks are mur- 
dered ; unless, perhaps, I should except from the count 
those that are drowned with the birch withes. For it is 



A BUCK. 135 

very common to save the gunpowder by catching the deer 
over the head or horns with a long birch sapling withed 
in a noose at the end, and then press the head under 
water until absolute drowning is effected. The blood is 
then let out by a quick cut across the throat. 

Contrast this with our way of hunting in old times, on 
the banks of Owl Creek, or on the Delaware and the Sus- 
quehanna. 

How well I remember a breezy morning when the music 
of the hounds came down the valley of the Delaware, from 
the hills above the great rapids of the Callicoon. I stood 
at the run on the west side of the river, a mile above 
Kellum's, and the deer, after a long run, came down di- 
rectly before me, on the opposite shore. But he saw me 
before he took the plunge, and wheeling about went up 
the precipitous bank, whither my bullet — sent at a long 
venture — in vain followed him. 

I leaped into the canoe that was lying under the bushes 
near me, for I knew that the buck was heading down to 
a lower run, and I went flying down the rapids, swift as 
the deer was going through the woods behind the hills. 
We almost met at the lower run ; for I had but leaped 
from my canoe when he came out of the bushy bank and 
took the water at a flying leap. The foam dashed high 
as he pressed across the shallows, and then I shouted 
after him ; and as he leaped into the air, the ball intended 
for his fore-shoulder broke the hind-leg below the joint. 

He turned and charged up the shore, first looking as if 
he would have annihilated me, and thinking better of that 
took the land a hundred yards below, and, stumbling up 
the bank, fell as my second ball from old swivel-breech 
went to the intended spot. 

You will perhaps say my way of killing him was no 



136 I GO A-FISHING. 

less murder than the Adirondack drowning. But I think 
otherwise, and so will any one who believes in giving 
game a chance for life. 

A few words by way of practical advice to Adirondack 
visitors may be of value here, notwithstanding the many 
books in which more full information can be found. Paul 
Smith's is a good hotel, for families as well as sportsmen. 
Ladies can enjoy a stay there, and can go a-fishing when 
they please. 

The boats are constructed for the lake country. They 
are built of very thin stuff, and are so light that one man 
easily takes one on his back and walks off, up hill and 
down, for a half or three quarters of a mile without fatigue. 
Each boat will hold two persons comfortably, and three, 
or even four, if necessary. 

Having entered the forest at Paul Smith's, you will per- 
haps desire to pursue the usual plan of some Adirondack 
visitors and camp out in the woods for a while. The mo- 
dus operandi is this : 

Your party will require guides and boats according to 
their number and character. Ladies, who will find it cap- 
ital fun to try forest life, need more guides than gentle- 
men ; and in fact, here as elsewhere, the only direction 
for traveling with ladies is to provide them with abundant 
physical strength in the way of guides and assistants. A 
lady can travel in any part of the known world with her 
husband or brother, if the latter will only take care that 
she has ample attendance, easy horses or methods of car- 
riage, and is never under any circumstances for one instant 
allowed to over-fatigue herself. 

Thus, if you have ladies, make your day's journeys 
shorter by half. Make long detours by water, if thereby 
you can avoid fatiguing tramps through the forest. But 



GOING INTO CAMP. 137 

let the ladies be assured they can hunt and fish in the 
Adirondacks quite as well as gentlemen ; and if they will, 
they can shoot deer as often as their husbands (the guide 
holding the animal as aforesaid). 

At Smith's, you will select your guides and purchase 
outfit and provisions. Smith has every requisite and lux- 
ury on hand. The guides are in general a fine set of 
good -hearted, simple-minded, noble fellows; excellent 
company in the forest, well acquainted with its sights and 
sounds, its language, that to you may be unintelligible, 
but to them is like English to an Englishman, they can 
translate to you a thousand written tales on wood and 
water, on hill and rock. Not unsusceptible to poetry, 
they will appreciate the beauty of that language, even 
more keenly than you, until you learn their simplicity of 
thought. " Learn simplicity," said I ? well, it may per- 
haps be acquired. 



VIII. 

THE ST. REGIS WATERS NOW. 

My latest visit to the St. Regis waters was in the spring 
of 1872. It was early in May, the fifth or the sixth, when 
Dupont and I drove up to the door at Paul Smith's, now 
a large hotel capable of accommodating a hundred and 
fifty guests. Thus early in the season there were no 
sportsmen in the house, and we had it all at our service. 
It was so pleasant that, with the exception of a week in 
town, given to business, I remained there until the first of 
July. Reasons touching the state of my health made it 
desirable for me to spend all the days, rainy or sunny, in 
the open air, and I took more or less fish every day, ex- 
cepting Sundays. 

We had passed the night at Franklin Falls, and reached 
Smith's a little before noon. We had no unpacking to 
do, for our baggage was slender. I looked out of my bed- 
room window at Peter's Rock across the lake, and won- 
dered whether trout would still rise to a fly over there as 
in other years. Descending to the front piazza with our 
Norris rods in hand, we found a small assembly of guides 
waiting to greet us. When they saw the fly rods they 
opened their eyes and mouths. 

"You don't think of fly-fishing at this season, do you?" 

"Why not?" 

" Why, the trout never rise to a fly here till the first of 
June." 



JOHN AND FRANK. 139 

" Nonsense ; you don't know any thing about it." 

Unruffled by the short reply, which certainly seemed 
sufficiently impertinent from a couple of city sportsmen 
to a group of Adirondack guides, John M'Laughlin ap- 
pealed earnestly to Frank Hobart, saying, " Now, Frank, 
what do you say, will trout rise to a fly in the St. Regis 
waters before the last of May ?" 

" No, they won't," was Frank's categorical answer. 

" Do they ever rise nowadays at Peter's Rock ?" I 
asked. 

"Yes, in the season, plenty of them." 

" Then just get your boats on the water, and we'll show 
you whether they will rise as early as this." 

In ten minutes or less we were standing on the rock, 
and at the second or third cast a half-pound fish came 
up and took the bobber with a rush, as if he wanted it. I 
had scarcely struck him when Dupont had a larger one 
on his tail fly. John looked at Frank and said nothing. 
Another and another rose and were landed, but as yet 
no large fish. At length, casting along the edge of the 
rock, I struck a full-pound trout, and he was one of the 
strongest fish of his size that I have ever seen. When he 
was landed, John quietly remarked : 

"Well, Frank, I'm beat, and I give it up — don't you?" 

"Yes, I give it up," said Frank quietly, and walked 
down the rock to hand Dupont his landing-net for another 
full-pound fish. 

" Now, I'll tell you," said John, in a reflecting, thought- 
ful tone, " I'll tell you what it is. We have a way of do- 
ing things always in the same way, and we begin every 
spring with trolling for lake trout, and we think there's no 
use fly-fishing till the trolling season is well over ; and 
the fact is, nobody ever thought of throwing a fly here as 



140 I GO A- FISHING. 

early as this, and consequently we've been thinking al- 
ways that trout wouldn't rise to a fly till June. Live and 
learn !" 

John, however, was right to this extent, that until the 
trout get to feeding on flies they do not rise so freely as 
later in the season, and large fish seldom rise in the early 
spring ; and they do not congregate at the mouths of 
brooks, but seem to be scattered and more difficult to 
find in large lakes until the water grows warmer. In a 
week's fishing, among several hundred trout that we took, 
none were very much over a pound in weight, and the 
major portion were smaller fish. We threw back many 
quarter-pound fish, reserving only a few of the small ones, 
because I esteem them for table use as vastly better than 
larger ones. 

We whiled away the afternoon on the rock and on Isl- 
and Point across the lake near the house. In the bay, off 
the mouth of the swamp brook, where in August in old 
times I have killed many a three-pounder, I could not get 
a rise. The trout approach the cold brooks later in the 
season, when the lake water begins to get warm. I note 
this fact, that nearly every trout which I took on this aft- 
ernoon rose to a bright green fly unlike any American in- 
sect that I know of, and which I used because it happened 
to be on an old leader that had never been dismantled 
since I killed trout with it on Loch Katrine. There were 
no flies on the water, and it was so cold that night that 
the ice froze like a pane of glass over small ponds. 

We sat by the fire in the evening, and I told Dupont 
stories of the old times in those regions, which seem to 
have passed out of the memory of the present generation. 

And then we talked of far lands where we two had 
wandered together — for it was only a little more than 



OSGOOD RAPIDS. 141 

two years since Dupont and I had heard the roar of the 
Nile bursting through the barriers of Syene; and then 
we grew sleepy, though it was not yet midnight, and then 
we went to our rooms and slept. But once before I slept 
I heard that mocking laugh of the loon, and then the wind 
rose among the pine-trees by the house, and I fell asleep 
listening to the strange sound, full of memories. 

Monday morning was bright and clear — too clear for 
fly-fishing ; but we held an early consultation, and John 
and Frank agreed that, since trout would rise to a fly ear- 
ly in May, notwithstanding local traditions to the contra- 
ry, there was no place in which they were more likely to 
be found than the Osgood Rapids. So we went to the 
Osgood Rapids. As a general rule, all the streams in 
the Adirondack region are sluggish for long distances, 
and fall over short, rocky rapids here and there. The 
whole country is a level, with innumerable lakes and 
ponds connecting with one another by these streams. 
The Osgood, a small lake, three fourths of a mile from 
Smith's house, receives the water from Jones Pond, and 
discharges a stream, tolerably strong in high water, into 
Meacham Lake, some miles distant. 

Boats for fishing the Osgood must be carried from 
Smith's, and to one who has not seen it the procession of 
a party crossing " a carry " is very droll. The guides lift 
the boats, upside down, on their backs, supported by a 
yoke which fits the shoulders, and walk off as comfortably 
as a man with a carpet-bag. You can see the boats, but 
only the legs of the guides. They seem to be boats walk- 
ing — a row of elongated terrapins ; and when two or three 
move off in a line the scene is odd and amusing. It is no 
small work to carry a boat three quarters of a mile, and 
many of the carries in this country are much longer. 



142 I GO A-FISHING. 

We made a few casts on the lake, and Dupont took a 
couple of fish — one a full pound, and the other three 
quarters — from underneath an old log near the shore. 
Then we crossed the lake, and went down the river two 
miles or so, lifting the boats over one ruined bridge, and 
pausing here and there at the mouths of cold brooks to 
try if the trout would rise. But we did not find any till 
we reached the head of the rapids, where we went ashore, 
put on our wading-trousers, and, standing at the top of 
the rocky fall, cast over the swift water. Now here was 
an interesting fact, which I beg you, who are concerned to 
know the habits of trout, to consider. The rapids were 
about three hundred feet in length. The water was deep 
at top and foot. But no trout were to be found above or 
below the swift water. It was only in the rushing current 
that they were lying, and here they were innumerable. 
Casting over the swift water, and drawing the flies rapid- 
ly up against or across it, would bring up the fish in 
plenty. There were few large fish. None that we got 
that day went over a pound, and not many over a half. 
It made little difference what flies we used. They rose 
to any thing, and struck sharply. In an hour or two we 
had killed some fifty or sixty fish, and the sun was now 
overhead, hot and glaring, and we were getting only small 
trout. So we stopped our work and went down stream to 
investigate other places in the deep shadows of the pine 
groves. 

You never saw a stream more thoroughly fit for trout 
than this was, full of deep, dark holes under rocks and 
brush; but there were no trout in it below the rapid. We 
passed some hours in the vain search for them, and at 
length came back to the head of the rapids and threw 
ourselves down on the bank, weary and exhausted with 



OSGOOD RAPIDS. 1 43 

some miles of wading and struggling through swamps and 
underbrush. 

The sun had gone westward, and the shadows of the 
pines were thrown across the stream. Wild pigeons were 
abundant in the trees. Now and then a flight of duck 
went over us. The wind was gentle, but it roared in the 
pine-trees as if a heavy surf were breaking just beyond 
the hill. We took our places again on the rapid, Dupont 
on one rock in mid-stream, with Frank by his side, myself 
on another rock with John. It would seem that the num- 
ber of fish had been increased, instead of diminished, by 
our morning's work. They rose at every cast, and we 
landed them at our ease. We threw back countless small 
fish which we did not care to take out, and finished the 
day's sport with a hundred and fifteen trout to take home 
for the supply of the hotel. It is a comfort to take fish 
where they are sure to be useful for food, and it is a sub- 
ject of profound regret that many persons go into the 
woods and camp, and, having only a few mouths to sup- 
ply, kill large numbers of trout which are not eaten, but 
thrown away. No sportsman does this. It is only the 
inexperienced and thoughtless who find pleasure in kill- 
ing fish for the mere sake of killing them. I have often 
amused myself, after taking all the fish that I needed for 
food, by breaking off the point of a fly-hook and casting 
the harmless deception to call up the trout, and watch 
their swift rush and splendid plunges. But there is no 
sport in killing fish unless some one will eat them. 

We gathered our traps together — the rods, the wading- 
trousers and shoes, the landing-nets and the fish — and 
started homeward. Up the river, rowing easily till we 
lifted over the old bridge, then up the narrow, winding 
stream, with the guide kneeling in the bow of the boat, 



144 * GO A- FISHING. 

and poling her against the current with the oar, or drag- 
ging by the bushes, which almost met overhead. Out 
again into the broader river, and then into the open lake 
— calm and still, a perfect mirror — and across it to the 
foot of the carry, and then over the hills through the for- 
est to our home. 

Whatsoever else has changed, the old echo of years 
ago is the same at this spot. It seems to me sometimes 
as if it were from another world that these responses come 
in the darkness — so long is the interval, and so pure and 
soft the answer even to a harsh and heavy call. But, 
alas ! there are no answers audible to the waking ears out 
of the earthly distances toward which we send our most 
longing calls. 

I returned, as I have said, to the city, and Dupont aban- 
doned me. I went back to the St. Regis a week later 
with an artist friend, the best living painter of fish, and 
he remained a few days, and then I had the month of 
June to myself alone. The weather came on suddenly 
hot. It was welcome, for the trout which in the early 
spring had been scattered about the lakes, loving cool 
water, began to gather around the mouths of the cold 
brooks, and we found them more easily. A leaf from 
my memoranda will give an idea of how the time for one 
week was employed. 

Monday, Jicne 10th. — John M'Laughlin and Frank 
Hobart guides ; morning on the Lower St. Regis, in sight 
of the house all the time ; a dozen fish, two or three a 
pound each ; after luncheon to Barnum Lake ; carry three 
fourths of a mile to Osgood ; cross the upper end of Os- 
good, and carry again a mile to Barnum; no fish till just 
at dusk, when I got half a dozen, one only going over a 
pound and a half. 



OSGOOD RIVER. 1 45 

Tuesday, nth. — Osgood Rapids; plenty of small fish, 
but none large; gave up fishing, and lounged on the 
rocks all day. 

Wednesday, 12th. — Morning on Lower St. Regis; a 
half-dozen good fish; afternoon on Barnum; a gale of 
wind blowing and a heavy sea ; six fish, one a pound and 
three quarters. 

Thursday, 13th. — Explored Deer Pond; went down 
the St. Regis outlet to the mill, and carried in a half 
mile to the pond; heavy rain pouring all day; a dozen 
good trout ; home to dinner at six. After dinner tried the 
old place a hundred rods from Smith's house at the 
mouth of Weller brook; took six fish about a pound 
each. 

Friday, 14th. — Osgood all day long; about forty good 
fish and many smaller. 

Saturday, 15th. — Drove down the wood road toward 
Meacham seven miles; left the horse standing and went 
into Osgood River, fishing it, wading, about two miles ; 
ninety fine fish, all good size, many over a pound; driv- 
ing home, as we crossed the inlet of Barnum, waded into 
the shoal water and cast over the lily pads, taking three 
pound fish. 

That last day of the week is worthy somewhat extend- 
ed notice, since thereby I may give to the inexperienced 
reader some instruction in river-fishing. The Osgood 
River, coming out of Osgood Pond, runs some three miles 
through swamps a heavy, sluggish flow, receiving occa- 
sionally the water of a cold brook. Then it plunges 
down a short rocky rapid, of which I have before spoken 
in this volume, flows swiftly around rocks and through 
dense green woods for a mile or so, then pursues a wind- 
ing course, now slow and deep, now swift over gravelly 

K 



146 I GO A -FISHING. 

bottom, for three or four miles, until it emerges from the 
forest and runs through the Burnt Ground. This is a 
large tract of sandy and rolling country from which all 
forest has disappeared, probably because of a fire. The 
river, in a deep ravine, is bordered by thick brush, and for 
two miles winds in a swift current between hilly sides, so 
that the angler who commences to whip the stream near 
Mountain Pond can come out after four or five hours' 
work within a mile of his starting-point. 

I drove over from Smith's with John and Frank, and, 
leaving the wagon at a convenient point, went into the 
river in the morning, not far below Mountain Pond. 

Although there is vastly more pleasure to the experi- 
enced angler in using a seven-ounce rod, I recommend for 
work in such a river, among underbrush whose branches 
and roots often extend into the water, a somewhat heav- 
ier weapon. I used a rod made of ash, weighing nine or 
ten ounces, which I call a black-bass rod. It served its 
purpose well when heavy fish went under the masses of 
overhanging alder, or dived into bunches of roots, from 
which only patience and a steady pressure could extract 
them. 

John took a stout bait-rod and deceived the trout with 
the tail of a red-fin on a strong hook. I used two flies, 
on the tail a dark brown, almost black fly, and above a 
Montreal claret and gray. 

I said I went into the river. I mean what I say. In 
the early season I am accustomed to wear English wad- 
ing-stockings, with heavy brogans over them. When the 
warm weather advances I eschew all rubber coverings. 
The objection to India-rubber clothing is chiefly that it 
confines the ordinary insensible perspiration and makes 
it decidedly sensible. Ln cool weather it is less unpleas- 



DOWN THE RIVER. 147 

ant, but in warm weather I find it intolerable, and wade 
without attempting to keep dry. 

For a mile or so I think the fly took two trout to one 
for the bait. They rose mostly to the brown tail fly. 
But we got no large fish. The river was deep and strong. 
Heavy rains had swollen it, and an occasional plunge 
into a deep hole warned me to be cautious if I did not 
care to swim. 

At length we approached a spot where the river nar- 
rowed, and ran swift and strong under a log which crossed 
it three feet above the surface. On either side the bank 
was cut under by the current. 

" I wonder," said John, " whether my big fish is in his 
hole under that bank." 

" Do you keep one there ?" 

" I left one there last year. I lifted him out twice and 
lost him." 

"Try him again now, and I'll look on." 

So John let his red-fin tail swing down the current, 
and, drawing it toward the bank, dragged it swiftly up 
under the crossing log. The trout lay in his hole and 
saw it, and made a bold dash at it. 

" I've got him," said John, as he swung him out, but 
down he went again into the swift current. 

" He's gone back to the same hole," said John, and 
repeated the manoeuvre. The result was precisely the 
same, and again he lifted him out, dragged him ten feet 
in the rushing rapid, and lost him. " I'll have him yet," 
said the determined guide ; and at him he went again, and 
again hooked and lost him. 

Mark the fact that this trout had been severely hooked 
three times, and as many times repeated his rush at the 
bait; for on the fourth attempt John landed him, a pound- 



140 I GO A-FISHING. 

and-a-quarter fish, with his mouth badly torn by the pre- 
vious failures. 

Whether fish suffer pain from wounds is a question 
much discussed among anglers. I am convinced that 
they do not. My opinion is based on many facts like 
this which I have related. I once lost two hooks in suc- 
cession, fishing with bait in a deep hole, under closely 
hanging bushes, where I could not use a fly. Finding 
that my snells were not to be trusted, I knotted a hook 
on the line, tried the third time, and landed a fine trout 
from whose mouth I took the two hooks which I had 
lost. I once took a small trout on a fly, who rose sharp- 
ly and struck with vigor, whose side had within a few 
hours been so badly torn by another fish, or by a hook, 
that the skin was gone from the belly to the dorsal fin 
a full inch wide, leaving the red flesh exposed. I have 
seen a skate, weighing more than fifty pounds, caught on 
a bait-hook in Fisher's Island Sound, drawn up to the 
side of the boat and his throat cut across with a gash in- 
tended to be and supposed to be sufficiently deep to kill 
him. The same skate was caught and brought out on 
the same hook within thirty minutes afterward. In- 
stances might be multiplied from my own experience. 
Other anglers could furnish many more. From such ob- 
servations I have become convinced that wounds do not 
give to fish that sensation which we call pain. 

The angler who has hooked a fish with bait and lost 
him, should not hesitate to throw again into the same 
spot ; for, unless the fish has been frightened by seeing 
the fisherman, he will take the bait as readily the second 
time, and often with more vigor, as if angry at its hav- 
ing escaped him. This is especially true of pike and 
pickerel. I once took a pike in Glen Falloch, at the 



EIGHT FROM ONE HOLE. 149 

head of Loch Lomond, who struck a spoon four times 
before I landed him, and each time was badly torn by 
the hooks. 

But, on the other hand, it is generally true that if a 
trout is pricked by a fly-hook he will not rise to it again. 
This is, perhaps, owing to the simple fact that he has found 
no taste of flesh on the hook. In one single instance in 
my experience I have known an exception to this rule. 
Casting on a lake in the Franconia Mountains, I pricked 
a two-pound trout, and pricked him badly. The water 
was clear, and I saw him rush off, turn, and, as my fly 
again fell in the same spot, go at it with a fierce dart, and 
I landed him. I speak, of course, of trout as I have known 
them. In all that I say of trout-fishing, I beg my reader 
to bear in mind, what I have elsewhere tried to make 
plain, that the habits of trout vary with their local habita- 
tions, and there are many waters full of them of which I 
know nothing, and where their customs may be quite dif- 
ferent from those which I have learned. 

When John had landed his old friend, I went down to 
the log and threw my flies below it. There was a project- 
ing point of the bank some thirty feet down stream, under 
which the body of the current was flowing. As the tail 
fly came up, and swung across this current within a foot 
of the bank, I had a fine strike, and drew out into the 
open river a good pound trout. He made fierce strug- 
gles, but I killed him in two minutes, and struck another 
at the same spot. In fifteen minutes I had taken eight 
trout from that hole, averaging a pound each, every one 
striking the fly at the same point to an inch, and then I 
could not raise another fin. 

" Try your bait there, John." 

Down went the red-fin tail on the current, and into the 



150 I GO A-FISHING. 

hole. No trout moved while it went down ; but the in- 
stant it was drawn up the water boiled as a good fish 
struck it, and then John took three more, making twelve 
that we had from that one hole, and all good fish. 

A little farther down the river, in the afternoon, as I 
was slowly going down the middle of the stream, casting 
some thirty feet of line before me, I saw a sudden com- 
motion a hundred feet ahead, and three or four small fish, 
red-fins or shiners, springing into the air. This on river 
or lake is very fair evidence that a large trout is chasing 
them. I plunged rapidly forward ; and, as the brush for- 
tunately opened just here so as to give me a longer back 
cast, I rapidly increased my length of line until, at sixty 
or seventy feet distance, my tail fly fell exactly where the 
shiners had gone out of water. I was by no means sure 
that a trout who was feeding on fish would rise to a fly ; 
but this fellow was making a large dinner, and mixed his 
dishes. The second or third cast brought him up. What 
a magnificent roll and plunge that was, as he turned his 
peach-and-gold side up to my satisfied vision. Satisfied, 
because at the same instant I felt his heavy stroke on the 
Montreal fly, and knew by the short, sharp click which 
I felt, but can not describe, that he was firmly hooked. 
He seemed to know it also, for he went down stream at a 
tearing rate. The sound of the reel was whizzing instead 
of whirring. I had but fifty yards of line on my reel, 
and this fellow had taken forty, and I was floundering 
down among rocks and rapids after him, when he turned 
and came up stream. I never use a multiplying reel for 
trout. The occasion does not happen once a year with 
me when I desire one, and the rapidity with which it takes 
in line has, by reason of knots and snarls, cost me so 
many broken tips that I have long abandoned its use, ex- 



A GAME FISH. 151 

cept for striped bass. Possibly, had I been able to re- 
cover line as fast as this fish came up stream, 1 should 
have saved him. As it was, by the time I had reeled in 
thirty yards I found my flies free for another cast, and I 
cast again. It is of no use to lament a lost fish. I had 
enjoyed the satisfaction of his first strike. Though an 
angler often says after landing a fine fish, " I was sure of 
him when I felt him strike," nevertheless, I suppose he 
never yet felt really sure of a fish until he had him in the 
landing-net — nor then always. More than once I have 
seen a fine fish not yet dead thrown overboard from the 
bottom of a boat, where his teeth were caught in the 
meshes of the landing-net suddenly lifted to take in an- 
other. It is safe to be always ready to lose a fish. Nor 
have I ever known a more remarkable loss than occurred 
to me still later on that day. Frank had followed down 
the bank of the river, and I had twice given him my full 
basket to empty. After the second emptying, the first fish 
which I took I put in it, a three-quarter pounder, and, 
standing on a fallen tree six feet above the stream, cast 
below over a deep hole, and, as I cast, saw this fish's 
head coming out of the receiving hole in the top of the 
basket. Before my left hand could reach him, a flap of 
his tail sent him like a shot into the air before my eyes, 
and he vanished in the pool below me. 

"John," said I, "after that I am going home. A soli- 
tary fish standing up on his tail and putting his head out 
of the hole in a twelve-pound creel is a wonderful sight, 
and means something. Let us be superstitious for once, 
and stop work." 

I have thus given a sketch of six days of Adirondack 
fishing, and you perceive a gradual improvement in the 
catch of fish as the season advanced. At the same time, 



152 I GO A-FISHING. 

\ 

however, you will bear in mind that black flies and mos- 
quitoes increase as the fishing improves. 

On Monday morning before breakfast I killed nine fish 
near the house, at the mouth of the Weller brook, which 
weighed eleven and a half pounds. I can not learn from 
any one that a speckled trout has been taken in these 
Adirondack waters for many years weighing oyer four 
pounds. There is nothing in size to equal our Maine 
waters, where the brook trout grows to weigh eleven 
pounds, and where seven and eight pound fish are as 
common as three-pound fish elsewhere. It is not a very 
common thing in the Adirondacks in modern times to find 
a trout over two and a half pounds. I saw one taken out 
of Cold Brook, a branch of the Osgood, which was a little 
short of three pounds. But it will prove difficult to find 
a comfortable hotel and home like Paul Smith's any where 
in the world with plenty of good trout within ten minutes 
of the door, and in the later season a reasonable number 
of three-pounders. My camping days are pretty much 
over, and I prefer now a good roof, a good table, a good 
bed, and some of the refinements of civilized life in the 
evening after a day's sport, and here one has all that is 
needed. 

My camping days are pretty much over, I say, and yet 
I slept on the balsam boughs one night. John and Frank 
were very anxious to have me revive old memories by 
going to Follansbee Junior for a night. I yielded to the 
temptation, and on Wednesday morning, while Frank went 
in on foot across the woods, John and myself went down 
the St. Regis River fishing, till we came to the junction of 
the Follansbee outlet, and up that to the pond. The St. Re- 
gis is a wild stream, now pouring down rocky rapids, now 
gliding swiftly under dark pine groves, now lounging slug- 



FOLLANSBEE JUNIOR. 153 

gishly in the sunshine between banks loaded with the 
swamp alders. The water was low, and we could not 
shoot all the rapids, so that we had now and then to jump 
out in the stream and lower the boat among the rocks. 
A half-dozen times we lifted her over fallen trees. In one 
place we slipped through under a fallen pine by lying flat 
in the bottom, and had not an inch to spare, as the bark 
of the old tree scraped our backs. There are some points 
of rare beauty along the river, and all the way the scenery 
is wild and fine. 

But the outlet of Follansbee Junior was fearful for boat 
work. At best it is but a brook, winding in a thousand 
short curves and angles for a mile and a half from the 
pond to the St. Regis. We found it unusually low, and 
some one had broken up the beaver dams, of which there 
were three or four on it, and which served to set back the 
water somewhat and make it deeper. We had as hot and 
heavy an afternoon's work as could be desired. Now we 
pushed with our paddles, now we dragged on the bushes, 
now we stuck fast in sharp angles, and now we found the 
water almost wholly invisible ahead of us among the roots 
of the alders. I became so thoroughly disgusted with the 
work that, having the bow paddle, I jumped over, and, 
seizing her by the nose, plunged ahead and dragged her 
for a quarter of a mile. But this was none too easy, for 
the treacherous little brook abounds in holes into which I 
went deep, and in quicksand bottom where my feet sank 
and stuck hard. But perseverance conquers, and we came 
out of the woods at last on the calm surface of the beauti- 
ful little lake, and paddled up to the old shanty where 
Frank was waiting for us. Many who read this, and more 
who will not read it, remember that old shanty on Follans- 
bee Junior which has been for many a year the sports- 



154 T G0 A -FISHING. 

man's favorite camp. Built in a swamp, with intent to 
have it where it will not be burned by forest fires, it is the 
chosen resort of many million mosquitoes and black flies, 
and yet it has been the resting-place of a hundred sports- 
men in past times. For the lake abounds in trout, and 
is a choice feeding-place for deer. In the evening we 
paddled up to the mouth of the principal inlet brook and 
took out some trout for supper ; for those which I had 
taken in the day I had sent home by a boy who came in 
with Frank. The twilight was fading into a soft moon- 
light, and I lay back in the boat, on the lonesome lake, 
and remembered scenes in old days that will not come 
back, call them ever so loud, ever so beseechingly. 

Once I was on this lake, with John M'Laughlin for my 
guide as now, and when the evening came down it began 
to rain, and the fish rose fast. It was the deer season 
then, but we were after trout. I was seated on the bow 
of the boat, John at the stern holding her fast by his 
paddle driven into the sandy bottom. A rifle lay in the 
boat at his feet, but we had not thought of using it. I 
had on a white rubber coat — one of the light English 
coats, almost as white as linen, and a broad-brim white 
felt hat, turned down all around to shed the rain. As 
I was casting I raised my eyes to the opposite shore 
of the pond, a hundred rods across, and saw a buck 
come out of the cover to the shore. I spoke in a low 
voice — 

"John, there's a deer." 

"Where?" 

"Just to the right of the Quebec landing." 

" I see him. I'll try how near I can paddle you up to 
him, if you'll shoot." 

" No, I'll sit still if you'll paddle and shoot, but with this 



SHOOTING A BUCK. 1 55 

white coat of mine I don't believe we can stir without his 
going." 

I used to think that a deer was one of the most foolish 
of animals, for he will even stand and look steadily at a 
man as long as the man is motionless, but almost at the 
wink of an eye, surely at the slightest movement of a head 
or hand, he is away. Imagine the scene as we moved 
across the lake in the gloaming, for it was past sunset of 
a rainy evening, and tell me if that buck was not exceed- 
ingly stupid for an animal supposed to be timid beyond 
all others. I was in the extreme bow, a white statue. I 
folded my arms cautiously at the start to cover even my 
hands. John and the boat were out of sight behind me, 
and the paddle was invisible and noiseless as we shot 
across the lake. He was feeding on the grass in the edge 
of the water, standing broadside to us with his head down. 
At fifty rods' distance he raised his head and saw us. 
Stretching up his long neck and turning his head full at 
us, he stared in astonishment at first, curiosity next, satis- 
faction at last, for the paddle had stopped, and he only 
looked at a motionless white mass which resembled noth- 
ing he ever saw before. As soon as he began to feed 
again we advanced swiftly some fifteen or twenty rods, 
when he lifted his head again, and again seemed lost in 
wonderment. We were not more than thirty rods off, 
and as he looked at me I looked at him for full two min- 
utes, but though I could see his eyes he clearly failed to 
see mine. If he had ever been in the Vatican Gallery he 
would have recognized the queer object before him. It 
resembled nothing so much as a herculean torso, without 
arms, of old marble a little yellowed by earth and age. 
Certainly he had never before seen a man in a white rub- 
ber coat, for at length he went to feeding again. Now 



156 I GO A- FISHING. 

John sent his paddle into the water. Ten or a dozen 
sharp strokes, and up went the head again to look at us, 
but the bow of the boat swerved just enough to let John 
shoot over my left, and at the instant the rifle cracked, 
down went the buck, dead at the fall. I never saw a 
deer fall more suddenly. After that I advised sportsmen 
to paddle up to deer with white rubber coats on. 



IX. 

CONNECTICUT STREAMS. 

All along the northern shore of Long Island Sound, 
running down through the rocky "back-bone" of Connec- 
ticut, which is generally only three or four miles distant 
from the Sound, are streams of water which used to 
abound in trout. Perhaps they do so still, but it is some 
years since I have fished them. I know that some of 
these streams are now preserved, and yield abundant 
recompense to their guardians. 

The salt-water trout, as some call them, differ in no re- 
spect from the mountain trout. And whether their flavor 
is improved by access to the salt water is a matter of 
taste. The rich red color of their meat is probably due 
to the abundance of shrimp and shell-fish on which they 
feed. And this is also the most probable reason for the 
variation in the color of the meat of inland trout. Most 
of our lakes and slow running streams abound in fresh- 
water shrimp, which are a favorite food of trout. They 
are small, but can be found by thousands in masses of 
weed and water plants, and where they are thus seen 
the trout will invariably be found to have red meat. In 
swift running streams the shrimp are not found, and the 
meat of the trout is white. Probably other food of a 
similar character, possibly snails and small shell-fish, con- 
tribute to the ruddy tint of the flesh. As a general rule, 



158 I GO A-FISHING. 

the trout with red meat is esteemed superior in flavor. 
But this is not an invariable rule. My own taste places 
as generally the finest flavored trout I know of those 
which are taken in Profile Lake in New Hampshire, and 
which have red meat, but I have often found them fully 
equaled by the small trout from the Pemigewasset River, 
which runs out of the lake, and whose flesh is always 
white. These trout are, however, better in flavor in rainy 
seasons, when the river is high, and inferior when the 
streams run low. The flavor of trout of the Connecticut 
shore coming up from the salt water is uniformly fine, 
and I think as a general rule superior to the Long Isl- 
and trout. The latter are sometimes woody even after a 
run in the bay. In fact, the flavor depends chiefly on the 
food, and somewhat on the freedom of exercise which the 
fish enjoys. 

There was a stream not far from New London which 
in former years I was accustomed to fish with great suc- 
cess. It ran through a variety of country, rising far back 
among the hills and wandering, now in a deep swampy 
forest, now losing itself in a diffuse course over acres of 
marsh, and now dashing down a rocky hill, into a field of 
hard turf, through which it flows under high, bare banks, 
and now again descending a ravine, from rock to rock, 
and basin to basin, till it reaches the pool at the bottom 
of the hill, which is also the head of tide-water, in an arm 
of the sea that puts up thus far. I might add, that it is 
crossed by a railroad bridge before it reaches the salt 
water, from which many thousand eyes have looked down 
on the stream, without knowing what treasures to the 
fisherman lay below its surface. 

In point of fact, it was in that way that I discovered 
the stream. I had crossed it two or three times, and each 



PLUNGING IN. 159 

time when in haste ; but each time with the resolution 
formed that I would one day sound the depth of that 
stream, and know more of its character. One of those 
windy days, when it blew as if the wind had not had a 
holiday for a year, I drove off from Stonington in the 
afternoon, and before dark reached a farm-house near the 
stream and asked for a night's lodging. I found, as I 
was sure I should, a warm and hospitable reception, and 
was made comfortable for the night in a large bed in a 
large room, in a wing of the house around which the wind 
roared all night long, until toward morning it grew tired 
of vainly trying to keep me awake, for I slept well, and 
woke with the day. By eight o'clock I found myself on 
the stream. I struck it in an open field, just above the 
swamp in the wood, and it appeared to be necessary to 
go through the swamp, if I would fairly try the brook. So 
I plunged into it boldly. It was my first trial of wet feet 
that year, and I had some misgivings at the first, but they 
all vanished at the first misstep I made, when I found 
myself standing in three feet of mud and water, with a 
coating of both over my right cheek, and a considerable 
quantity of the former in my left eye. It was natural. I 
had suddenly a sort of at home feeling. I had expe- 
rienced such sensations before. I was in my old business. 
So I plodded my way along, crushing thin ice at every 
step, and watching for any indications of trout. A musk 
rat, who made a mistake in getting on the ice instead of 
under it, was the first animal of the ferce natures that I 
discovered. He disappeared in a large open space of 
water, and suspecting that there were deep spring holes 
thereabouts, I approached somewhat cautiously, and threw 
over the darkest hole under the roots of a maple. 

My flies had but touched the surface, when a gentle 



l6o I GO A -FISHING. 

rise, followed by a heavy pull, indicated that some animal 
had it. I don't know what it was. It is not probable 
that I ever shall know. I did not see the animal. I never 
saw my tail fly again. Probably it was a fish ; and prob- 
ably, with a sagacity truly astonishing, he took a round 
turn with my leader around a root of the maple, to pre- 
vent my getting the advantage of him on a pull. What- 
ever course he pursued, he was successful ; for when I 
gave it up, and pulled a steady, strong pull, I got nothing. 
My line came up without a tail fly, and I replaced it, and 
tried again on the same hole. Would you believe it, the 
result was exactly the same again ! — a rise, a rush, a round 
turn, a reasonable and patient delay, then I paid out, 
threw the slack over my shoulder and, taking the line in 
my hand, drew gently, stronger, stronger yet, and up came 
the leader without the fly or trout. The pool was inac- 
cessible, or this need not have occurred. But I could not 
get to it to sound it, and so I tried a third fly, and cast a 
third time. Sir, it was a school of trout, where they were 
taught to outwit fishermen. I never saw that fly either. 
I waited ten minutes, hoping that the trout would suppose 
I was gone and cast off his fast. But no. He had prob- 
ably found a trout-surgeon to extract the hook, while I 
stood there waiting, and I broke the leader, reeled up my 
line, and sought an open field where the fish were less 
knowing. 

The grass was just sprouting in the meadow into which 
the stream debouched from the morass, and I threw over 
a ripple below a fall. The second or third cast was 
successful, and I lifted a very decent fish, weighing say 
three quarters of a pound. I took another out of the 
same ripple, and then followed the stream downward. 

They seemed to be lying in pairs in all the favorable 



STREAM FISHING. l6l 

places. I generally got two where I got one, and sel- 
dom more than two. The morning wore along, and I 
worked slowly down stream, enjoying the air which grew 
softer momentarily as the sun approached the zenith. I 
took a dozen in the open meadow, and then entered the 
ravine, where the stream commenced its descent of half 
a mile toward salt water. In the first basin I took one 
larger than any I had previously caught, and then sat 
down to rest a while in the sunshine, which stole deli- 
ciously down through the branches of the leafless trees. 
I had a book in my pocket. It was soaked through and 
through, evidently at my first plunge above described, 
when I had filled my pocket as well as my eye with mud 
and water. I made a large fire, and laid the book near 
it to dry. I wished to save it if I could, and I left it 
there while I went down the stream. For company to 
the book I left a trout, a large, fine fellow, split and lying 
on a flat stone, judiciously slanting toward the blaze, and 
toward where the coals would be when the blaze should 
die away. It was an experiment. I had never tried it 
before in that way, and I had not over much confidence 
in it. But I left it to work its own success or failure, 
while I whipped the stream down to the railroad bridge. 
Before I reached the foot of the ravine the cover closed 
over the stream, and it was impossible to do any thing 
with the flies. I know many anglers who under the cir- 
cumstances would abandon the brook, and go on down 
to some more open place for a cast. I counsel no such 
nonsense as this. The true angler is not confined to fly- 
fishing as many imagine. When the fly can be used it 
always should be used, but where the fly is impracticable, 
or where fish will not rise to it, he is a very foolish an- 
gler who declines to use bait. 

L 



162 I GO A-FISHING. 

Without doubt there is quite as much skill and experi- 
ence necessary to the fisherman with bait as to the fish- 
erman with the fly. How many will call this heresy ! 
But let the angler who is so fond of his fly that he re- 
gards bait-fishing as always vulgar, try with me the dash- 
ing Pemigewasset, and I prophesy that in five miles of 
that glorious torrent he will not raise five trout to a fly, 
and I will have taken, following behind him, three hun- 
dred. Small fish, of course, for the most part, but an oc- 
casional half-pounder, and once in a while a larger trout. 
In that river they will not rise to a fly at any season. I 
have tried it more than a hundred times. And for that 
reason shall I forego the splendid scenery, the magnifi- 
cent ravines, the wild rush of the white torrent down its 
thousand feet of descent, the beautiful pools among old 
rocks, the long stretches of still, clear water — all the 
glories of the most glorious river in America ? I think 
not. That is a stream down which it is worth an an- 
gler's while to go, with a short rod and short line, and a 
worm-bait, or the tail of a trout to tempt his fellows. 

I took off my leader and flies, wound it around my hat, 
and replaced it with a hook and a single shot by way of 
sinker. A fly-rod is not the best for bait-fishing; but I 
had taken a somewhat stiffer rod than usual, anticipating 
the occasion. With three feet of line or even less I 
reached into deep holes under heavy bushes and fallen 
trees that jammed the ravine, and took out a fine lot of 
trout, working my way down with great difficulty, until I 
found myself standing on the last pile of drift-wood, from 
under which the stream flowed into the head of tide-wa- 
ter — a lagoon in the salt marsh — in which I hoped to 
find la r ge salt-water trout. 

Replacing my flies, I cast diligently up and down the 



FOUR POUNDS. 163 

stream, but in vain. Then I came back to the bait; but 
now I changed it. With a small fly-hook and a bit of 
worm I took a minnow, and used him to entrap his en- 
emy the trout. Nor without success. I struck a two- 
pound trout, and landed him after a three-minute strug- 
gle. Another, not so large, and another, and yet a 
fourth. For each I had to catch a minnow, and it took 
time. I was fishing for a fifth minnow when I heard the 
whistle and roar of an express train a mile or so away. 
I looked up and forgot my hook for a moment, so that it 
went to the bottom. My eye was directed down the rail- 
road, and I saw the engine, a black spot on the track, 
swelling as it approached, when a sharp pull called my 
attention to the business in hand. He had gotten some 
yards of line already, and was going down stream with 
a rush. I felt him, and he pulled with a strong pull. 
" Four pounds at least," was my first idea, and down I 
followed him. That railroad bridge was a puzzle to me. 
The stream narrowed to go under it, and I had guessed 
its depth to be not less than four feet, with mud bottom. 
If the fish got through it, he had the advantage of me. 
So I made a dead stand, and stopped him. I tried the 
reel, but I could not budge him toward me. So I reeled 
in, while I approached him, until I had about three fath- 
oms out. Just then the train was approaching, and I 
saw three or four heads out of the windows watching my 
movements. As they dashed by at fifty miles an hour, I 
was trying to lift the fish to the surface and ascertain 
what he was. For though not thirty seconds had passed 
since he took the hook, I knew by this time he was no 
trout. Nor was he. I did not land him w.ith that light 
rod for full ten minutes. 

If the excited gentleman who was looking out of the 



164 I GO A -FISHING. 

last window of the last car of that train, and who sprang 
out to the platform so swiftly, and waved his hand to me 
with such an emphatic gesture of delight, has any curi- 
osity about that fish, and if he ever read this book, then 
these presents are to inform him that that fish was no 
trout at all. It was a bull-pout, a cat-fish, or whatever 
you choose to call the ugly, devilish-looking rascals that 
lie in mud holes and come out to annoy respectable fish- 
ermen. I killed that fish. I deliberately hammered 
him on a stone till his head was dead. His tail, I sup- 
pose, is yet alive. But he will not bite again. 

I returned to the rock where I had left my book and 
my trout. The book was there. So was Caesar, the 
large dog from the farm-house. So was not the trout. 
I had my suspicions. The dog saw that I had, and, 
dropping his head and tail, slunk into the cover, and did 
not meet me at the door when I returned to the farm- 
house. The book was dry, and I walked homeward with 
over two dozen trout, every one of them fit for a royal 
table. And they graced a royal table that evening, load- 
ed with the luxuries of country life. And when the even- 
ing waxed late, and the hour of separating came, I went 
to my room to sleep. The wind swept occasionally with 
a wail through the tree overhead, and rattled a loose 
shingle on the roof, but I slept none the less soundly 
and quietly. 

After that I used often to fish that stream, sometimes 
alone, sometimes with friends. 

One morning, when I was fishing the stream upward 
above the swamp, I found what is a noteworthy charac- 
teristic of many of the farms in this part of Connecticut. 
It seems to have been the ancient custom for the farmer 
to have a family burying-place on his farm. And I sup- 



GRAVES IN THE THICKET. 1 65 

pose that when the farm was sold, the title to the graves 
was reserved. And so it happens that on some farms 
there are several burial-places of different families. And 
I have often found little groups of graves in the most 
out-of-the-way places, overgrown with bushes, in dense 
thickets, evidently unvisited for many years, apparently 
forgotten utterly. No one lives to tend them. No one 
cares for the memory of the sleeping family. It is some- 
what curious to stand by such graves. One recalls in 
imagination a distant past, and wonders again and again 
as he thinks how wholly the generations of men pass 
out of memory. There were tears and sobs and all the 
emotions of sorrowing human nature once by these 
graves. As each was opened and closed, and a new 
treasure committed to the ground, the same grief was 
manifested, the same old mournful utterances were heard 
where now the bird sings unmolested. The young and 
the old died then as now. In the farm-house, which 
strangers occupy, there have been sad scenes enacted in 
old days. 

As I pressed my way through dense cover on the bank 
of the brook, I found my passage blocked by a row of 
grave-stones. The bushes were tangled and thick above, 
and the moss was green and wet on them, and no in- 
scription was visible. I picked up a stone, and rubbed 
it over the surface of one of them, and so there began to 
be visible enough to show me that it was the resting- 
place of Faith , who died in 1772, aged eighteen 

years. There were some lines below, hidden where the 
strong stems of the bushes were crowded close to the 
stone, and I could not press them back sufficiently far to 
clean the moss and read the epitaph. I could only 
make out parts of some words, but I discovered the let- 



l66 I GO A-FISHING. 

ters hap — , and that word so often found in such places 

— PEACE. 

When the light of those young eyes faded there must 
have been deep grief in the cottage. Might I not muse 
and weave a story, standing in the thicket by her grave ? 
She was past all harm from gossiping story-teller. She 
whose pure young life would have been marred if any 
one had ventured to talk too freely of her living. But 
death, while it sanctifies, makes the dead a sort of pos- 
session of all the world. We take our dead out of the 
house, and out of the family circle, and lay them in the 
open congregation, and mark their names for all the 
world to read, and if that means any thing, it surely 
means that the world may now talk of them, for they are 
beyond reach of injury from mortal voice. 

She who sleeps in the thicket was eighteen years 
among the trees that are now overshadowing the cottage. 
I have seen the trees, and they must have been old and 
stout and broad when she was living. Her name was 
Faith, a good old name, common in Connecticut, and I 
dare to think that she was worthy of it. It is a pleasant 
name for a young girl, implying trustful confidence. Did 
she not grow up among the beautiful things of earth ? 
Did she not learn to love them all ? There can be no 
purer life on earth than that of the young girl who lives 
in the quiet home of a country farm-house, learning little 
except of nature, and taught by the country pastor to 
look always up to God from his works. Do you remem- 
ber what Sir Thomas Overbury wrote of the " Faire and 
happy milk maide ?" 

" She dares go alone and unfold sheep in the night, 
and fears no manner of ill, for she means none. She is 
never alone, for she is always accompanied with old songs, 



THE FARMER'S DAUGHTER. 167 

honest thoughts and prayers ; short ones, but they have 
their efficacy ! Her dreams are so chaste that she dare 
tell them. Only a Friday's dream is her superstition. 
That she conceals. Thus lives she, and her only care is 
that she may die in spring-time, to have store of flowers 
stuck upon her winding-sheet." 

I need not deny that I thought of that description when 
I was standing by the grave in the thicket. How could 
I help thinking of it ? Perhaps it had to do with my im- 
aginations also. Thus they went on. 

The farmer's daughter grew up, beautiful and beloved. 
In the morning she saw the sun rise from the sea, and her 
young thoughts went wandering to the far East, and she 
remembered the story of the Passion. In the evening, 
tired with her day's work, she saw the starlight on the 
water, and drank in the beauty of the night as one by one 
the stars went down the sky, and by the intuition of youth, 
not unaided by some sorrowful experiences even in her 
young life, she learned that the bright and beautiful things 
of earth go out one by one, but that to the patient watch- 
er, even in cloudy nights, there will come other visions of 
beauty, other stars to be bright and shining in their turn, 
and that there is a to-morrow, when the blue will be as 
beautiful and the stars as clear. Patience is the lesson 
of the star-watchers. The old Chaldean learned it when 
the stars were younger than now. I have seen the Bed- 
ouin, lying prone on the desert sand, studying the unceas- 
ing revolution of the sky, and learning the same lesson. 
Why might not Faith, the young girl in Connecticut, learn 
it as well ? This is all a fancy story you know, but let us 
give rein to fancy. She grew up exceeding fair and beau- 
tiful. The sunshine kissed her cheek only to give it the 
bloom of a rose. Her eye borrowed the color of the 



1 68 I GO A- FISHING. 

night sky she loved to gaze at. Her hair was curled by 
the loving fingers of the wind. Invisible spirits of earth 
and forest and sea-shore surrounded and guarded her. 
It is not necessary to be a " Spiritualist" to believe in 
spirits. Draw the line correctly. We all believe in spir- 
its. Few are so skeptical as not to believe in spiritual in- 
fluences and communications. The great point is that 
we can not exchange converse with them. There is the 
boundary between the visible and the invisible world. 
They hear us, they see us, they may even know our 
thoughts, and fully appreciate our longings. But they 
are forbidden to tell us the mystery of the dividing wall 
between us, and as to their escaping the prohibition by 
thunderous raps on pine tables, or the smashing of furni- 
ture about our legs, it is nonsense. If some interpreter 
will rise to tell me what the voices are which float on the 
sea-wind at night, and fill my ear and soul with melody, 
and with emotions that I can not understand; if some 
seer will explain to me why the rays of yonder star, rising 
above the hills, make me so restless that I can not sit, 
but must walk up and down the gallery, and think and 
think and think, as a swift-crowding, crushing host of 
memories and hopes and fears and wild untrained fancies 
go through my brain ; if some one of spirit lore will come 
to me and tell me that the day and night are full of spir- 
itual voices, and give me the key to unlock sunshine and 
starlight, and possess the messages they bring ; if there 
be any one who will take for me one message, and bring 
me back one answer, from a silver-haired old man who 
has gone to God and stands now before his throne, white- 
robed, a message that will tell me how I may henceforth 
talk with him as of old, and gather counsels in times of 
agony as I used to gather them at his feet when all our 



THE YOUNG GIRL FAITH. 1 69 

lives were peaceful, let the wise man make himself known, 
and I alone with my own hands will build him a temple 
where men shall worship his memory for ages to come. 
1 know that the spirits who inhabit the universe of their 
Maker and Master are around us. I know that they sug- 
gest thoughts, whisper memories and hopes, talk to us, 
but, alas ! not with us. I ask them — and they answer not. 
I beseech them, and they make no reply. I talk to them. 
They talk to me. But there is no question and response. 
I question the shadows as well as the sunlight, the storm 
as well as the evening breath of balm, but until I put off 
this clothing of the earth that is so earthy, I have no hope 
for spiritual converse. 

But Faith lies sleeping in the thicket, and I get on but 
slowly with her story. How old she would be now if she 
had lived ! More than a hundred years, if I remember 
the date aright. It was, I think, 1772 or thereabouts. 
That was when Jonathan Trumbull was Governor of Con- 
necticut. They were stirring times, and the farmers along 
the coast knew something of the vicissitudes of war. For 
the French and Spanish quarrel had brought trouble and 
sorrow, with some loss, into the Connecticut homes. One 
can hardly imagine how people lived here in those times. 
The farmer's family, over yonder in the heart, of the coun- 
try, had but little communication with the world. New 
York was weeks away, Boston as far, and neither New 
York nor Boston was of special account as a place of 
news in those days. New London was a much more im- 
portant port to the people hereabouts than any city on 
this side of the Atlantic. Old London was months dis- 
tant. The government was far off, but it began to be felt 
about this time. I wonder whether the farmer's daughter 
wasted much time in thinking of the queen, if there was a 



170 I GO A -FISHING. 

queen — and I can not stop now to remember whether 
there was. Did the young girl weave romances about her 
" sovereign lady ?" It seems odd to think of a New En- 
gland girl looking up to the British throne for the example 
of all that was womanly, and teaching herself loyalty to 
theking's wife beyond the sea. Let us not wonder. We 
will tell our own story about her, and believe it as we tell 
it. It is just as well so. What, after all, is the need of 
knowledge in such matters ? I like not this way men have 
of demanding proof of every thing before they believe it. 
Her name was Faith, and I tell you faith is the substance 
of things that we wish. Men go prowling around a story, 
a tradition, a history, and demand evidence of every state- 
ment, pick flaws in every weak place, and refuse to be- 
lieve except they have evidence, and believe when they 
think they have it. And yet the fundamental point in 
evidence is faith. Nothing can be proved without taking 
for the starting-point blind, absolute faith. Forgetting 
this is the blunder that men are making in their rational- 
istic theories about the Bible and the Christian religion. 
They attempt to overthrow, and some of them to their 
own satisfaction do overthrow, the Bible as a rule of faith 
and practice, and as a history too, because they demand 
evidence which is sufficient to satisfy them, and say they 
can not find it. Why, man, your own existence is known 
to you only by faith. Feeling is faith. Seeing is faith. 
Hearing is faith. Every sense you have depends on faith. 
You say a man said "Yes." I deny it, and say that he 
said " No." You say you heard it. I deny that you even 
have the sense of hearing. You only imagine you hear. 
You say you saw him speak. I deny it ; you only imagine 
you saw him speak. You have no hearing — no senses ; 
you do not exist at all ; your body is a myth ; your local 



FAITH. 171 

existence is a pure fancy ; there is no such thing as a 
man, a world, a universe. If it does exist, it is all but a 
microscopic affair ; its size is no larger than the millionth 
part of a drop of water, within which millions of animal- 
cules live their lives and die their deaths as you and I do. 
How can you prove that all this is false ? Why, only by 
your faith. You must take something on trust, you must 
believe something on blind faith, in every attempt of hu- 
man reason, as the foundation of every argument, on 
every subject on earth or in the world of spirits. And 
who are you, rationalist, infidel, liberal reasoner, whatever 
you call yourself, who are you to tell me how much or how 
little I am to take on faith ? This truth that I am teach- 
ing you is as old as the Aristotleian days ; it is the old 
truth that has been hurled in the teeth of rationalists in 
every century since the jargon at Babel, and yet there are 
always men who go about the world ridiculing faith and 
preaching the age of reason. I would rather believe every 
thing that is not harder to believe than to disbelieve. 
This much I do ; I take it on blind faith, absolute, indis- 
putable, that this Book is the word of God, inspired of 
God, and I defy the stoutest reasoner of all the modern 
schools to make me doubt that, any more than I should 
doubt my own existence. 

In the great contest now and always going on in the 
world, the defenders of the faith, good men who strike 
boldly for the truth, nevertheless allow themselves to be 
led off from their vantage-ground by the rationalists. 
They are eager to defend, but they go down into the open 
field of reason with the men who attack them, and lose 
half the battle by so doing. Their shield is faith. The 
breastwork behind which they fight is faith. Let them 
stand there, and no rationalist can touch them with any 



172 I GO A- FISHING. 

weapon. The answer to all arguments of skepticism is 
"I believe." "Why do I believe" did you ask, my ra- 
tionalistic friend? Ah, my dear sir, faith is the gift of 
God. I am not one of your sort who go about bothering 
for reasons. I believe. You laugh at me ? I can stand 
that. You sneer ? I can stand that. You know nothing 
of the sublime meaning of the words " I believe." All 
the results of argument, study, laborious investigation, 
human reason, can but produce in the human mind this 
conviction, to wit, " I think ;" or possibly this, " For the 
present and until further investigation show other truths I 
believe." But that is not faith. I would give more for 
the simple operation of a child's mind who says, " I be- 
lieve it because my mother told me so," than for your 
firmest convictions based on the most patient investiga- 
tions and the universal concord of the schools. If the 
good men of our day who are fighting this battle with ra- 
tionalism, would but intrench themselves in the citadel of 
faith, the contest would cease. Rationalism could not 
approach them. Nor would it, in that case, gain so many 
of the uneducated people of the world. For faith is ten- 
fold more winning than reason. A man who believes and 
shows that he believes is more powerful than one who 
reasons, and shows himself ready to abandon his faith 
when he hears better reasons. 

In the ordinary affairs of life few men believe because 
of reason. Faith, in the commonest subjects, is without 
reason. If one were asked why he believed in the con- 
quests of Alexander the Great, he would reply because of 
history. But his faith in historical accounts is not faith 
based on reason or evidence. On the contrary, it would 
not take five minutes to show him that a few old manu- 
scripts, not dating very far back, hunted out and printed 



THE FAITH OF CICERO. 1 73 

in the fifteenth century, form but a loose basis for " rea- 
sonable " faith. Nevertheless his faith is not shaken by 
discovering how weak is its foundation in reason. It is 
far easier to show men that they have no ground for be- 
lieving the accepted history of Greece and Rome, than to 
overthrow the trustworthiness of the histories bearing the 
names of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John ; but men will 
believe the profane history in spite of arguments which 
show that it lacks evidence, and men will believe the sa- 
cred history though all the powers of reason seek to un- 
dermine their faith. 

Here then is a mental force, faculty, action, call it what 
you will, which is not within the understanding of ration- 
alism, and with which it has no weapons to deal. The 
grandeur of the position, " I believe that I am immortal," 
is above the appreciation of reason, beyond the province 
of reason even to attack. You who think reason the 
highest faculty of the human soul have to learn that there 
is yet a higher, namely, faith which is the gift of God. I 
know none higher, since it smiles serenely at impotent 
reason, it alone takes hold of the supernatural, and brings 
the unseen and eternal within the inspection, the knowl- 
edge, the affection, the devotion of humanity. 

Sneer at this faith of mine if you will, for surely I care 
not now and shall not care hereafter. I say with Cicero, 
" Quod si in hoc erro (quod animos hominum immortales 
esse credam), libentur erro ; nee mihi hunc errorem quo 
delector, dum vivo extorqueri volo ; sin mortuus (ut qui- 
dam minuti philosophi censent) nihil sentiam, non vereor 
ne hunc errorem meum mortui philosophi irrideant." 

In yonder thicket is a grave. The headstone tells me 
that a young girl was buried there a hundred years ago. 
Do you want proof that the headstone tells the truth ? 



174 I GO A- FISHING. 

Dig down and you will find no dust of humanity there. 
You will doubt whether it ever was there ; I will still be- 
lieve it was. I think the dust that was once fair human- 
ity, blue eyes and ruddy cheeks, white breasts and rosy 
fingers, has grown up in flowers and leaves of trees, and 
has gone wandering on the winds of heaven ; and I be- 
lieve — I want none of your reasoning — I believe because 
the book of my faith tells me so, that that dust once held 
enshrined an immortal soul, that now lives and will live 
when there will be no more sun and sea. And I believe 
too that the day will come when God, sitting on his white 
throne, will call that wandering dust from distant hills and 
valleys, gathering dust to dust again, and that the young 
girl will stand up fair and beautiful by the stream, and 
pass to the place appointed for her. And this I believe, 
just as I believe from the words on the head-stone that she 
was buried there after eighteen years of life in the old 
times, when Jonathan Trumbull was Governor of Connec- 
ticut. That is faith. You need not argue about it. I 
take it on faith, and am content. More content, I ven- 
ture to say, than you are with any results of your reason- 
ing. Nay, you have no results. Reason only leads you 
to the point that all is doubtful. You can be sure of 
nothing, except by taking something as true on blind faith. 

But for that faith what sad and solemn memories would 
those be, which are now bright and cheerful, of the be- 
loved ones who rest in peace. 

In the years that are gone many times I have fished 
that stream and other streams in company with two 
brothers and a sister, in whose holy memory I have writ- 
ten every word of this book. There is nothing left of 
them here but memory. It is very beautiful. They rest 
in peace. That is the word ! 



PEACE. 175 

It was the word that I found on the grave-stone of the 
girl Faith in the thicket by the trout-brook. It is the word 
which every mountain-brook, every breaking ripple on a 
lake-shore, every voice of the wind whispers to the angler 
who goes along thinking of companions that are gone. 
Over all the tempestuous waves of human sorrow it comes 
with the melody of his voice, and the waves obey him. 
There is no better illustration of the manner in which 
heaven-expecting men in all ages have longed for peace, 
have prized it and sought it as a blessing to poor human- 
ity, than is found in the fact that from the remotest times 
in the East it has been the burden of those salutations, as 
we call them, which men exchange. More than thirty 
centuries ago, when Jacob met the servants of Laban he 
inquired, " Is it peace with him ?" For such is the cor- 
rect rendering of the Hebrew which in our version is trans- 
lated " Is it well with him ?" When Moses met Jethro 
they inquired after one another's peace. And to this day 
in the Oriental countries the common salutation is the 
blessing " Peace be with you," and the answer " Be it 
peace." 

In old times it was a word that seemed to belong emi- 
nently to our faith. We do not find it often in Greek and 
Roman authors, nor did they seem to look to it as the 
blessing of this or the joy of the other life. 

Horace bade Dellius 

"jEquam memento rebus in arduis 
Servare mentem — " 

Because an equable temper of mind and life was, in his 
opinion, best suited to men who looked forward only to 
exile beyond an unknown sea : 



176 I GO A -FISHING. 

" Omnes eodem cogimur : omnium 
Versatur urna ; serius, ocius 
Sors exitura, et nos in aeternum 
Exilium impositura cymbas." 

But the Christian fathers loved to ring the changes on 
the word. 

Bernard wrote : " Quid dabis nobis Domine ? Pacem, 
inquit, do vobis, pacem meam relinqui vobis. Sufficit 
mihi Domine ! Gratanter suscipio quod relinquis. Pa- 
cem enim volo, pacem desidero nee aliquid amplius quae- 
ro. Cui non sufficit pax, non sufficis tu Domine, qui es 
pax vera, pax nostra." 

Augustine said : " Pax est serenitas mentis, tranquilitas 
animi, simplicitas cordis, vinculum amoris, consortium ca- 
ritatis." 

Jerome, writing of how hard it is to attain, said : " Pax 
querenda est ut bella fugiamus, nee sufficiat earn querere 
nisi inventam fugientem que omni studio persequamur." 

Isidorus described it : " Pax est plebis sanitas, gloria 
sacerdotis, patriae letitia, et terror hostium visibilium et 
invisibilium." 

Ambrose said : " Pax est dux at vitam eternam inveni- 
endam et habendam." 

Thus they all spoke of the peace that blesses the soul 
here, but of the peace that is there they were never weary 
of talking and writing, in ever-varying phrases of joyful 
expectancy. Bernard of Clugny, the monk who contrast- 
ed this world's sins with that world's glories, summed it 
all up in the lines, 

"Pax sine crimine, pax sine turbine, pax sine rixa 
Meta laboribus, atque tumultibus anchora fixa." 

Who that has studied the numerous epitaphs of the 



IRENE IN PACE. 1 77 

early Christian era which have been found in the Roman 
Catacombs and elsewhere, has failed to notice how fre- 
quently the word was used there to give expression to 
the dearest hope of the Christian living for the Christian 
dead. 

Lounging along the Vatican Gallery one day I was 
struck with the double use of the word in one of the old 
stelce from the Catacombs. Irene in pace. Her name 
was peace, and she rests in peace. Irene has been at 
peace well - nigh two thousand years. Who was Irene ? 
Little matters it now on earth, but this I read on the 
stone, that life was then as now somewhat stormy, some- 
what tiresome, somewhat wearying. Then as now, the 
young and gentle, the old and worn, longed for repose. 
Then as now, the voice of affection hushed the wailing of 
sorrow with that tender whisper, peace, peace. 

It was a word that men loved, even in old Rome. 
And when the hand of affection would trace the utmost 
of consolation over the grave of the dead Irene, it was 
only able to say, she is at peace ! No more struggling 
or sorrowing, no more working or wearying, no more 
sleepless nights and agonizing days. Did she live in the 
stormy times of the early kings ? It matters not, for she 
is at peace. Did she sit watching by the window for a 
coming footstep from the North, in the days when the 
great Julius fought in Gaul, and waiting vainly, did she 
die of lonesomeness ? It avails nothing to know, for she 
has long lain at peace. O blessed word, that Roman 
mothers whispered over their children, whose sound yet 
thrills the hearts of sad women and world-worn men, the 
word that sums up all the hopes of the mortal, all the im- 
aginations of immortal joys ! 

M 



X. 

AMONG THE FRANCONTA MOUNTAINS. 

The dawn was not yet visible over Eagle Cliff when I 
awoke, and, opening my window, stepped out on the bal- 
cony. The silence which held possession of the valley 
was profound. There was no voice of any kind of life, 
nor was there a breath of wind stirring tree or leaf. 
More than six hundred persons were sleeping in the 
Profile House and its surrounding buildings, but for 
aught that was audible the Franconia notch might have 
been as desolate as it was two hundred years ago. 

The early morning is to me the most charming portion 
of a mountain day. I blame no one for sleeping late. 
The luxury of that half- sleeping half- waking hour, the 
only time when one knows he is asleep, and appreciates 
it, is beyond all dispute. No one has clung to it more 
tenaciously than I. In town, where waking is waking to 
the rough sounds of the city, to morning smoke and rat- 
tling milk-wagons and shrieking hucksters, and the thou- 
sand indications that the feeding of the beasts is the first 
thing in a New York morning before work commences, 
I, too, have kept my head to the pillow with exceeding 
comfort in the consciousness that I was asleep, and great 
satisfaction in the thousand times reiterated assurance 
that I need not wake yet. 

But in travel and in the mountains and forests the 



MORNING ON ECHO LAKE. 1 79 

early morning is more delicious out of doors than in bed. 
True, it is always a subject of brief argument. When 
one first wakes he says this is pleasant, to lie here both 
awake and asleep, but is it not pleasanter to be outside 
and broad awake ; and I seldom fail to settle the argu- 
ment before the sun comes up to throw light on it. 

The most lasting memories of scenery appear to me 
those which one has of early morning views. Sunlight 
and broad daylight have a sameness that seldom makes 
an impression. We remember scenes in them, but we 
do not remember or take much note of the lights on the 
scenes. Dawn is always beautiful, and one is seldom 
like the dawn of any other day. This variety in an 
event which is forever occurring and re-occurring in ev- 
ery twenty-four hours is something wonderful. Even if 
each day of a long series be clear and cloudless, there is 
still something different each morning in the shade of 
light and in the line of its direction. To-day the first 
ray will brighten like the northern streamers through 
yonder gap in the mountain ridge. To-morrow the first 
silver stream will glide like a dream around the other 
side of the peak. Now it will come pouring down on 
the still beauty of Echo Lake from the one side of La- 
fayette, and another day it will flash suddenly into the 
valley through the rift near the Eagle Cliffs. Morning 
after morning you will have watched the mountain-tops 
to see which one first welcomes the coming light, and 
you will have made up your mind that there is an old-es- 
tablished affection between the Dawn and Cannon Mount- 
ain, when lo ! this morning you will see the dark masses 
of rock and the wild ruin of forest that lies dead, and 
terrible in death, on the Artist's Bluff, gloomy, fierce, 
tangled, looking like the matted hair of a black-browed 



I GO A- FISHING. 



giant slumbering away a night of drunkenness, you will 
see this monster's forehead grow suddenly serene and 
holy as the white fingers of the morning wander among 
the shaggy locks of his brown hair, and day bends down 
lovingly over him, first of all the sleepers, and blesses his 
drunken slumber with her pure kiss. 

If you never saw mountains wake out of the darkness 
when the morning is yet far off, you have something to 
see in this world yet. 

Shall I ever forget a night on the Mediterranean, when 
the steamer went plunging northward before a fierce 
sirocco, and all the sea and sky in the blackness of the 
darkness were hideously confused and confounded. I 
stood on deck, with the spray going over me at every 
roll of the ship, while now and then a monster came up 
to the stern and hissed as he sent his blue folds over the 
deck, and the ship quivered and moaned. All around 
there was nothing visible but this wild confusion of black- 
ness, out of which the waves lifted up their hands, and 
the floods called in tones of thunder. And then, sudden- 
ly as if a star had broken through clouds, high up in the 
eastern sky there was a vision of something white and 
pure and holy that was indeed only a star at first, but 
grew rapidly into a greater form, and shone as moonlight 
shines on a distant ripple of the sea, and then another 
and another and another white light came out of the 
gloom, and at last the great white waves of snow-clad 
Lebanon rolled along the eastern horizon. 

The proper way for one who loves fine scenery to be- 
gin the day here is to go at daylight to Echo Lake, and 
he should be on Profile Lake at and after sunset. In 
both cases he will be nearly alone. On Echo Lake I 
have never yet met a human being before seven in the 



EVENING ON PROFILE LAKE. l8l 

morning, and I have seen the day grow into full light 
there a hundred times. On Profile Lake during the aft- 
ernoon all the boats are out, and noisy groups of happy 
people are scattered here and there until toward seven 
o'clock. Then you will generally see only three boats, 
my friend Dupont's, that of Mr. C , and my own. 

Nor will either of us disturb the silence in which you 
will best enjoy the wonderful solemnity of beauty which 
surrounds you. As in the morning the mountain-top first 
met the fair face of the young day, so in the evening the 
mountain-tops are last to sink into darkness, but they do 
not seem to be the same mountains. They were joyous 
then, for day came pure and white and stainless. They 
are sombre and gloomy and profoundly sad in the even- 
ing when they see day going down in the West, her face 
red with passion or flushed with wine. For oh man ! 
never went day to rest unstained — never was Morning 
born so pure that she retained herself in purity till the 
setting of the sun — never yet came Daughter of the East 
with chariot wheels of silver, a fair and noble maiden, 
worth love and winning love, that she did not go away 
in clouds, with torn garments or in blushing shame. 

I said we would not disturb you. You must have quick 

ears to hear any sound when either C or Dupont 

throw fifty feet of line on the lake, for they use light rods, 
and there is an absolute perfection of beauty in the 
curves described by their lines. Now and then the sharp 
rise and swirl of a trout may attract your attention for an 
instant as one or another strikes him, but go on thinking 
while we go on fishing. If, indeed, you be an angler, join 
us and welcome, for then it is known to you that no man 
is in perfect condition to enjoy scenery unless he have a 
fly-rod in his hand and a fly-book in his pocket. 



l82 I GO A- FISHING. 

I stood on the balcony of my window and waited for 
the coming of the day. For I had agreed, the evening 
previous, with my artist friend the Baron, to go in the 
early morning over the lower slope of Cannon Mountain 
into the forest and pass two days there, he to make studies 
of ancient birch-trees and masses of moss and groups of 
fallen monarchs of the forest which lay there around, and 
I to kill time as I best might on a certain wild lake 
known only to a few of us. 

Long before the sun was visible over the cliffs we were 
off and climbing the steep mountain-side. The first ray 
of sunshine fell on us half-way up the hill, and lit the 
ragged sides of an ancient birch, so that it fairly gleamed 
with brown and gold, while in the middle of a bright spot 
of bark was a medallion head of Queen Elizabeth, the 
work of a worm who little knew what he was about in 
sculpture. 

From the road to the lake side was an hour and a half, 
chiefly up the side of the mountain. The lake was like a 
picture — calm, placid, waiting for us. Too calm for trout, 
but nevertheless very enticing. 

Dupont and myself, who have for many years fished 
these waters together, had sent up our India-rubber rafts 
(before mentioned in this volume), and had used them 
two or three times previously on the lake, leaving them 
on the shore, where, in this wild mountain region, they 
were as safe as if locked up at the Profile House. 

Hiram and Frank (our men) set themselves at once to 
work on a bark camp for the night, and after determining 
on its location and suggesting some ideas in the archi- 
tecture, I "blew up" my raft and went a-fishing. 

A year previous, on the same day of the month, the Bar- 
on and myself, with a friend, had discovered trout in this 



FLAVOR OF TROUT. 1 83 

lake, and killed a fine lot of large fish. We brought into 
the Profile House that evening forty-five fish, weighing 
thirty-nine pounds. Every one of those forty-five fish was 
taken on a scarlet ibis or a white moth. They would not 
rise to any other fly. A year had passed, the day was 
precisely similar in weather and atmosphere, but no trout, 
large or small, would rise to either of those flies. Yet 
there were thousands of trout in the lake, as I knew well. 
I tried several flies of the sort usually best suited to these 
waters, but could not get a rise. I began to despair. At 
length I put on for the stretcher a small fly, tied for me 
at Inverness — a crimson body, with shining jet-black 
wings, each wing tipped with pure white. At the first 
cast of that fly up came the first trout, a half-pounder. 
To this fly the small trout rose freely. But no large fish 
would be coaxed up. I took a dozen fair-sized fish, and 
then drifted idly about the lake till noon. The Baron 
was off in the forest, and would not be in camp till even- 
ing. I had nothing to do but fish or study the forest and 
the lake. Fishing was without object, since I had already 
taken all that we could eat, and if I took more they would 
not be fresh the next day. 

I never attempt to send trout from the forest to friends 
in town, excepting when I have a special request from 
some one who desires them. A trout is seldom fit to eat 
the day after he is taken. In the city we know nothing 
about the true flavor of this delicate fish, and hence many 
persons are surprised at the high praise bestowed on them. 
It is not so strange that a good taste pronounces trout, as 
ordinarily found in the city, or received there in ever so 
careful packing, an inferior fish for the table. There are 
a dozen varieties of fish in the New York market which 
are better than trout can ever be there. 



184 I GO A- FISHING. 

The flavor of trout varies in various waters. Where 
streams run through much low ground and forest, or 
through bog-land, and where lakes have muddy bottoms, 
with dead and decaying wood in the water, the fishy in- 
habitants are apt to have what we call a woody flavor. 
This is not always the case. I have taken trout of very 
fine, pure flavor from the worst looking water, but not often. 
A woody trout, if eaten at all, should be eaten within a few 
hours after he is taken. It is practically impossible to 
send such trout to a distant city, or to preserve them in ice 
for many hours. The unpleasant flavor increases rapidly. 

The best of trout suffer by keeping, even in ice ; and I 
strongly advise those who go a-fishing in distant parts to 
kill no more fish than they can eat, and to forego the pleas- 
ure of sending evidences of their success to friends, who 
may possibly be convinced of the fish stories they have 
heard by the sight of the " speckled beauties," but who, 
if their taste be educated, can not enjoy the result. 

Why should I kill any more trout on that day ? I had 
five or six pounds, enough for three of us, with the addi- 
tions to our dinner which Hiram's pack contained, and 
here was the lake from which we were as sure of taking 
our breakfast as if it were a kit of salt mackerel. 

So I went up to the head of the lake, where a brook 
comes in over a white gravel bed, pure and clear and 
cold, and, lying down on the beach in the soft sunshine, 
dreamed away the day. The night came on us with 
clouds, and the sounds of wind in the higher forests on 
the mountain sides. We made the camp-fire broad and 
high. Vast pine and birch logs, ten feet long and two 
feet thick, which with great labor Hiram had cut and 
rolled together, blazed high in the edge of the forest, and 
poured a rich light over the lake. Far out on the water 



OLD FRIENDS. 185 

I could see now and then the dip and lift of a lily pad, 
gleaming like a ruby. The Baron had been all day sketch- 
ing, but had come in at dusk, hung his sketches here and 
there on trees, and, as we both had good appetites, we 
dined sumptuously. Then we talked by the camp-fire for 
a while, and then he threw himself down on the balsam 
boughs under the bark shelter, and slept in peace. 

While memory is aroused so frequently by similarities 
of time and place, it is sometimes excited by the very re- 
verse state of facts, the total dissimilarity. I thought of 
camp-fires like this by which I had slept in other days, 
but these thoughts were brief, rapid, evanescent as the 
tall flames of the fire, leaping into light and vanishing to 
be followed by others in quick succession. And then, as 
I lay down with my head resting on a birch log waiting 
to be burned, the wind all gone, save only as I heard the 
sound far off on Cannon Mountain, the great fire sinking 
slowly till the heap of glowing logs gave out few flames, 
and the red light shone on the trunks of great trees about 
me, I found myself surrounded by a group of swarthy- 
faced men, with dark and flashing eyes, on whose every 
countenance I saw the light of faithful affection. 

I am not quite clear that there was any very remarkable 
coincidence in the fact that these old Arab friends sur- 
rounded me that night, and that on my return to the Pro- 
file House next day I met with late intelligence from them. 
Besides the general truth that the angler has opportunity 
to think, and naturally, when alone in the forest, calls his 
friends around him, it is more than possible that a re- 
mark made by a passing acquaintance on the evening 
previous had led to this assemblage. For a gentleman 
recently returned from Europe and the East had said to 
me, "I met your friend Steenburger at Alexandria. He 



150 I GO A- FISHING. 

talked of coming home this summer." John had been 
some years absent, and latterly had neglected his corre- 
spondence, and so this remark had set me to thinking of 
him when I was alone in the woods, and it was natural 
enough to remember our Oriental friends. 

In what little travel I have been able to accomplish in 
my life, I have made more warm friendships, and won 
more close attachments among the Mohammedans than 
any where else. Having passed among them but little 
more time than scores of other travelers, it has neverthe- 
less happened to me to form pleasant relations with men 
in various classes, and I look now to Egypt and Syria as 
countries in which I have warmer friends than perhaps in 
any other part of the world out of America, 

I have not to thank myself for this. There was one, 
who was always with me in visits to the East, whose stead- 
fast kindness and loveliness won the devotion of the warm 
Arab heart, and whose memory is kept green on the Nile 
banks and in the Holy City. 

And these sons of Ishmael and Esau, dark-faced men 
with flashing eyes, gathered around me that night in the 
outer edges of the fire-light. Sheik Houssein Ibn Egid 
sat there, wrapped in his black cloth cloak, with the crim- 
son and gold caftan shining under it. Grand old son of 
Abraham, who serves always when I read my Bible as 
the representative of the patriarch, for I have no doubt 
that he was just such a man in appearance, and in walk 
and manner of life. His keen eye does not any longer 
look from the hills above Wady Mousa, scanning the des- 
ert for signs of the enemy. The hand which was so 
gentle, yet so firm on the rein of his sorrel mare, the hand 
which — as I once heard him defiantly tell Mustapha Kap- 
itan to tell Said Pasha — could by a toss in the air of a 



HASSANEIN. 187 

handful of dust call five thousand men to the saddle, 
that hand is lying now under his cheek, and the grim old 
warrior sleeps with his face set toward Mecca. I remem- 
bered a morning in the City of Victory, when Sheik Hous- 
sein rode by Miriam into the great crowd near the Suk 
Khalil, where Islam by myriads waited the procession of 
the Makhmil, and where in other years no Christian face 
dared show itself. But the slight form of the fair-faced 
American, and her uncovered countenance, provoked only 
silent curses, no open insult, for the Bedouin by her side 
was the terror of dosert and city alike, and no man or 
woman dared to whisper an insult to her in his presence. 

There was Abd-el-Kader, the most polished of Oriental 
gentlemen, who ruled with great skill and justice the 
provinces of Upper Egypt, and who, after accompanying 
the British army on the Abyssinian expedition, returned 
to Cairo to die, just before I had hoped to take his hand 
there and thank him for old kindnesses. 

There was Yusef of Luxor, sheik of the old mosque 
that stands near the ruined temple, who is one of the 
kindest and most devout yet humble followers of Moham- 
med ; a man among them who reminds you of a sincere 
and earnest country minister in America, seeking good 
and doing good. And with him old Mustapha — Mus- 
tapha of Luxor. Who that has been there does not know 
him ? And as these men of Luxor came out of the forest 
I saw a crowd of darker faces, and — why — that clear-cut 
face, that bright keen eye, that black but comely counte- 
nance — surely that is Hassanein ! 

All the charm of the angler's life would be lost but for 
these hours of thought and memory. All along a brook, 
all day on lake or river, while he takes his sport he thinks. 
All the long evenings in camp or cottage or inn he tells 



155 I GO A-FISHING. 

stories of his own life, hears stories of his friends' lives, 
and if alone calls up the magic of memory. 

I can see myself now as that night, the fire blazing 
twenty feet high, the great trunks glowing and flashing, 
myself lying in the heap of logs which were waiting to be 
burned, comfortable, having lapsed by degrees into this 
and that hollow, until I was as perfectly supported as if 
lying on a Damascus diwan, and I can see Hassanein too, 
as he stood, black but comely, under a great birch-tree in 
the edge of the fire-light. 

I was drifting one night down the moonlit Nile, my 
boatmen having just finished a rough-and-tumble fight 
with the Arabs of Saboa, a Nubian village. It was a 
night of exceeding beauty and glory. On the cabin deck 
there was a sofa, cushioned softly ; and on that I lay at 
night, rolled up if it were cold, but generally with only my 
Syrian cloak around me, looking up at the stars of Egypt. 
That night, late as it was, I could not sleep, and so I sat 
myself down to think of the ancient splendor of the Val- 
ley of Lions, and gradually falling back in my seat, I was 
at length lying down under the blue sky, and the voices 
of the angry villagers died away far up the stream. For 
a half-hour the men pulled steadily at the oars, and then, 
laying them in, stowed themselves in all manner of curi- 
ous heaps about the forward deck, and sank into that 
deep sleep that characterizes the Arabs, while the boat 
swept on with the current, her head now up, now down 
the stream, now east, now west, and only the dark form 
of Hassanein, the Nubian pilot, was visible above the 
deck. He stood firm at his post, holding the tiller ; and 
I could see his quick black eye flashing like a star as he 
watched the shore and the river. 

Hassanein was a native of a small village a few miles 



HASSANEIN. ISO 

above Es-Souan. He was a tall, slightly-framed Nubian, 
black as ink, but with well-cut features, and a keen, intel- 
ligent look that was fully up to the mark of any first offi- 
cer I have ever seen on a Yankee schooner. Not that he 
was as quick or as sharp as a Yankee. Not a bit of it. 
But he looked so, and if he had been educated in Con- 
necticut he would have been so. As it was, he was the 
most reliable man on the boat, and the Reis having been 
in disgrace long ago, he was virtually the captain. 

There was a touch of romance about him. I saw that 
soon after he came on board at the Cataract, and I was 
given to talking with him when the opportunity occurred, 
for I found no small amount of information about the 
river stowed away in his shaven skull. 

" Hassanein," I said, in a low voice. 

" Ya, Howadji," was the inquiring response. My Ar- 
abic was not worth mentioning, and Hassanein never 
knew a word of English till we taught him to say " good- 
morning," and there his acquisitions ended. But I had 
acquired a knack of understanding the signs which they 
use very ably, and with my half-dozen Arabic words to 
ask questions, and my ability to understand some others, 
I could maintain a tolerable conversation with them. 

" Have you a wife, Hassanein ?" 

"I? No, Howadji." 

" How is that ? Why not ?" 

Hassanein sighed, and looked down on the deck. I 
turned over on my sofa and looked at him, and thereby 
he understood that I waited for an answer. At length it 
came. He talked slowly at first, then vehemently, and I 
lay and listened. I translated what he said somewhat in 
this wise : 

When Hassanein was a boy he was very much like oth- 



190 I GO A-FISHING. 

er boys. The world produces not dissimilar specimens 
of humanity in different parts of its rugged surface. Here 
was a boy like the son of a poor farmer in America, born 
to poverty, but born with some degree of hope beyond the 
small circle of his home — beyond the hills that inclosed 
the narrow valley of the Nile. Why not ? Is there any 
reason why an Egyptian boy should have less ambition 
now than had one who led the armies of the valley across 
the mountains of Syria and up to the summits of Leba- 
non ? Not such, however, was the ambition of Hassanein. 
No dreams of power or pomp of arms — no thought of 
gorgeous halls and Aladdin palaces haunted his waking 
thoughts or sleeping fancies. Sometimes, he said, there 
did come into his brain a strange, wild vision. He could 
not describe it. He did not understand it himself. He 
only remembered that when a passing boat brought news 
to the village of the splendor of Ibrahim Pacha's career, 
he had a strange impulse to go with him to the ends of 
the earth, and he went. For days and weeks he floated 
down the ancient river on a loaded boat, and at last 
reached Cairo and saw the armies of the great warrior 
preparing for the Syrian campaign. 

I did not fully understand in what capacity Hassanein 
went to Syria. It was not as a soldier ; perhaps it was 
as servant to some officer of the army. Enough that 
when the triumphant march took place through the Holy 
Land he went along the way. It was strange to hear 
him speak so carelessly of places that are so renowned. 
It was pleasant to lie and hear a man talk of Jerusalem 
and the plains of the Holy Land, naming them indeed by 
Arab names, but names that I had already learned well, 
and talking of them only as illustrating the swift career 
of the great son of Mohammed Ali. 



HASSANEIN. I9I 

It was at the village of Jenin on the plain of Jezreel 
that the Nubian boy lost his heart. She was a star, that 
Syrian girl, and to him as unapproachable as any star 
that shines above us. They were there some weeks, and 
he often saw her at the well — the spring that gushes out 
so gloriously from its long covered passage in the very 
centre of the place. He would sit there hours to see her 
but a moment. He had never seen the faces of women 
before. They had no hesitation in permitting his glance 
there, his gaze; and, in fact, the tall dark-eyed girl learned 
with a girl's quickness to look for his admiration, and re- 
joiced in lashing the poor Nubian boy with her quick 
eyes and smiles. 

It would seem too much like a love-story were I to tell 
you of his writhings under that delicious torture. It was 
enough for him to learn that she was a Nazarene, one of 
the despised and hated followers of Christ (known to this 
day as Mtzara), to feel the impossibility of calling her his 
wife even were he other than a poor Nubian. He was a 
Mussulman, believing in God and Mohammed, and he 
would die such, poor though he was ; but for her he felt 
that he could deny the Prophet and forfeit heaven, were 
that of any avail. 

Again I say why not ? That Nubian boy's heart was 
made in the same mould with Adam's, the same with 
mine and yours. It beat to the same time that the first 
heart learned in the warm walks of Eden, to the same 
pulsations that were once answered by the throbbing 
breast of Eve. He loved as men have always loved, poor 
or rich, and like many (how many !) he loved in vain. 
Alas the day ! 

It was not the old story — it was far worse. It was a 
half-muttered tale of horrible outrage, terrible wrong. He 



192 I GO A-FISHING. 

knew little about it himself: the end he knew. He awoke 
from a dream of madness and found himself standing 
over the dead body of his superior, and the fair but life- 
less form of his Syrian girl. Her soul had fled from her 
polluted body, and he had avenged her wrong with his 
own life. He was seized, bound, beaten till life was well- 
nigh gone, and then escaped and crawled back a weary 
way to the sea-coast, and — he scarcely knew how — found 
himself in Egypt. There again he was apprehended; 
but by chance an appeal to Ibrahim Pacha in person, as 
he rode through the streets, resulted in his discharge and 
freedom. He had been a sailor on the river ever since. 
He was not married — he did not wish to be yet — perhaps 
he might some day — and at this point in his story the 
boat brought up with a short jerk on a sand-bank. Has- 
sanein sprang to his helm, and shouted to wake up Has- 
san Shelalee, who was the responsible pilot above the first 
Cataract. The men were overboard in a few moments, 
and the usual scene ensued — a great deal of shouting, an 
immense deal of swearing (for Mussulmen swear like 
troopers, though travelers are given to calling their nu- 
merous exclamations very devout, which consist of com- 
pounds of the name of God), and a little lifting— at length 
she floated, and all were silent again, and I gathered my 
cloak around me and sank quietly to sleep. 

I think that while this memory flashed before me I fell 
asleep on the logs. I awoke with a start, listened to the 
curious sounds of the night, then threw myself down by 
the Baron's side on the boughs under the bark shelter 
and slept with serenity. 

Day had not fairly broken when I awoke and roused the 
Baron. We desired to try the early morning fishing ; 
and after a dash in the cold water and a cup of delicious 



A TELEGRAM. 



193 



cafe noir, made in ten minutes on the camp-fire, we 
pushed off on the rafts and began casting. 

There was a low fog on the lake, and so long as this 
continued there was little hope for a rise. I have gener- 
ally found in our northern waters that trout will not rise 
in fog. Once in a while the rule fails, but not often. As 
soon, however, as a light breeze came up from the south 
and lifted the fog, the trout came out for their breakfasts, 
and we began to have fine sport. But we could find very 
few large fish. Only two or three rose which weighed 
over a pound. I struck one much larger fish, but lost 
him. 

We cast for an hour, took some thirty or forty fair- 
sized trout, then went ashore for breakfast. While we 
were discussing a broiled chicken we heard a shout in 
the woods at the upper end of the lake, and in a few mo- 
ments saw Dupont emerging from the forest. He had 
left the hotel at sunrise and come over the mountain, 
bringing with him a package of letters and telegrams, to 
which we made the necessary replies, sending them down 
by a messenger. With all respect to the spirit of the 
nineteenth century, let an angler be permitted to record 
his detestation of the telegraph. One can't go now to a 
mountain lake, in the heart of the primeval forest, with- 
out being stirred up by sparks of intelligent electricity. 
There is no longer any such thing as kief in this or any 
part of the world. Do you know that word kief? Do 
you know kief? Go to Araby the Blessed and learn it; 
in the land where they always salute you with the prayer 
" Peace be with you." Still the telegraph may serve an 
angler's turn now and then. Some years ago, St. Anton 

and C (old anglers of our Profile House company) 

were dining with me at Geneva, in Switzerland, and after 

N 



194 I GO A -FISHING. 

dinner, about ten o'clock, we said, " Let's drink Dupont's 
health;" and we sent him a telegram to the Profile 
House in two words, " Your health," and he received it at 
eight o'clock the same evening. So Alp spoke to White 
Mountain. 

Nevertheless, as an angler I wish the magnetic tele- 
graph were among the lost arts. Why should we be an- 
noyed on the top of a mountain, by the shore of a beau- 
tiful lake, with the voices of the city ? 

Dupont came into camp, and began to criticise the un- 
finished breakfast. He abused the burned chicken, as 
he called it, and ate a wing and a leg and a breast — all 
that was left of it. He found fault with the coffee, but 
drank it by the cupful. The trout he declined, for they 
were cold, but he tasted three or four. 

We passed the day on the lake; but we had poor suc- 
cess. It was about the hottest day of the hot summer of 
1872, and although we were some thousands of feet above 
the sea-level, we felt the oppression of the heat, and the 
trout in the cool depths knew that it was warm above, 
and would not come up. 

We were therefore content to fill an eighteen-pound 
basket with small fish — only a few reaching a pound — 
and as the sun was setting the Baron came in from his 
sketching, and we started for home. 

The descent of the mountain is easy if you keep the 
right track, but difficult and dangerous if you lose it. 
We have learned the route pretty well, yet are apt oc- 
casionally to mirs it, and once found ourselves just at 
dark on the verge of a precipitous descent of three or 
four hundred feet, down which we effected an almost mi- 
raculous passage in safety. 

Now, however, we came down without adventure, and 



AN ARRIVAL. 1 95 

emerged from the forest on the valley road just as the 
last rays of twilight were vanishing. 

The horses knew that they were going home. We 
passed Profile Lake on a rattling trot, and when we rose 
the slight ascent coming out of the woods in front of the 
Profile House, the sight of the hundred gleaming win- 
dows cheered them as it cheered us, and they broke into 
a run and dashed up to the door in superb style. My 
legs were a little stiff, so that I staggered as I descended 
to the piazza, and might possibly have fallen but for the 
clasp of two strong arms which caught me, and a low, 
soft utterance of the musical salutation of the Orient : 

" The salutation of peace, Effendi." 

Involuntarily, before I saw his face, I responded " Be 
it peace," and, lo ! it was John Steenburger. 

Fresh from the fat-off lands of our affection, John had 
arrived in New York but two days before, and, finding 
some of our friends on the wing for the mountains, joined 
them, and was watching on the piazza for my return. 
How we embraced ! 

" Well, we are all here," said John. 

" What ? Who is 'with you ?" 

"All the family. Lucy and George and the young 
ones, Philip and the Doctor; all in your rooms at this 
moment." 

And there they were — the birch-wood blazing high on 

my hearth, the children asleep on thediwan, Mrs. L 

and her husband sitting before the fire, while "°hilip and 
the Doctor were furiously discussing some cr^tnic fishing 
sketches of John Leech, which were the chief ornaments 
on the walls. ' ' " - 

" You never wrote that you were coming. Serves you 
right to find the house full and no rooms for you." 



196 I GO A- FISHING. 

" I'm sure we have very comfortable quarters here," 
said George, surveying my cosy salon with cool satisfac- 
tion ; " nothing to complain of — wish I might always fall 
as fair on my feet." 

" Precisely, my boy. But you won't feel as well when 
you and Lucy and the two youngsters are crowded into 
that next room, as you will be to-night ; for the rest of us 
must manage with these diwans and the floor. We'll do 
something better to-morrow, and you have all of you seen 
worse quarters. Have you people dined ? Yes, of course. 
Half starved when you arrived. Supper they call it here, 
but I make it dinner. I must go and dress and get some- 
thing to eat. How bright the lonesome room looks ! 
John, go down and help me drink a bottle of Turken- 
blud." 

It was not strange that all our talk that evening was of 
the East and our old friends there, for John Steenburger 
was a late arrival, and having passed three or four years, 
at different dates, in Egypt and Syria and Asia Minor, 
knew all the people that we knew, and could give us late 
intelligence from them. I had missed him the last time I 
was in the East ; and he had seen Cairo and crossed the 
desert only a few months before his arrival. We yielded 
to the spell of the Orient. John Steenburger had brought 
it with him, and who could escape it ? He was but thirty 
days from Damascus. The very cigarette he rolled as he 
talked was of tobacco from the mart of Latakia, where he 
bought it, and the paper was some which he had picked 
up in a shop at Athens the day he rested there on his 
way across the isthmus to Corfu, and so up to Trieste. 

"No one of us has heard from you in months. Your 
letters must have gone astray. How came you to cross 
the desert again ?" 



EASTERN TALK. 197 

" It was a sudden notion. I was sitting in my room at 
Zech's in Cairo, that little room that opens on the front 
by the door, when I overheard a conversation which in- 
terested me somewhat. I was lonesome just then, and 
withal I did not know where to go next. It was there- 
fore pleasant to hear familiar voices talking of going 
somewhere. It turned out that the talkers were Ameri- 
can travelers. Some of them knew people that were 
friends of ours. I joined them, and they persuaded me to 
cross the desert. They went to Sinai. I left Cairo a week 
later, crossed to Akabah, and waited for them there, and 
so we went together to Petra, and thence by Hebron to 
Jerusalem. Afterward I was possessed with the idea of 
doing Asia Minor, at least so far as seeing the cities of 
the seven churches, and we did that too." 

" Poor John !" 

" May I venture to ask the meaning of that tone of 
voice ?" 

"What a lonesome life you have been leading, John. 
When we parted in Switzerland I felt as if I should never 
see you again. You have such a strange way of wander- 
ing off alone. You have seen a great deal of the world, 
but never, since we left you, have had any one to enjoy 
travel with you." 

"Company I never lacked. There was Laroche, the 
best Frenchman I ever knew ; Strong, whose good heart 
I wrote you about when I was sick in Aleppo; and Hall, 
the Englishman who did me a good turn one night in Da- 
mascus, when it might have gone hard with me but for 
him." 

" But you did not love one of them. I know that. The 
truth is, John, that travel, to be thoroughly enjoyed, must 
be with familiar and, more than familiar, affectionate com- 



198 I GO A-FISHING. 

pany. Travel in the older countries warms and opens 
the heart. Do you remember that moonlight at Bethel, 
when every rock was like a tent, and there were Jacob's 
ladders reaching up to the sky on every side of us ? Do 
you not remember how it made all our hearts as soft as 
the hearts of young children ? It was always so with me 
in the East. Strangers could not be happy together in 
such travel. You must have longed every moment for 
one or two or more companions to whom you could talk 
out all you felt. How many times I have seen you lie 
down on the ground, face up to the evening sky, back 
pressed on the turf, as if you were growing fast to it, and 
then pouring out your rhapsodies. You will never travel 
so joyously and freely again, unless we all go together." 

" Alas, dear Madam, that can never be in this world," 
said John, and we were all silent for a little. Then he 
added : " I think you are more than half right — I know 
you are altogether right. Eastern travel is different, in 
that respect, from all other. The drafts made on the 
thinking faculties are enormous. And not alone on the 
thinking faculties, but especially on the believing facul- 
ties. Sometimes I think faith is as distinct a faculty as 
memory. I am sure it is as distinct as conscience, for 
conscience is in reality but the judgment on comparison 
with a standard, and faith is much the same mental act, 
with the exception that it seems sometimes instinctive, or 
say inspired. All over the Eastern world every step brings 
some new object for faith, and faith yields or refuses to 
yield by an involuntary process. It is quick — swift as 
lightning sometimes, and it is the special happiness of 
travel, where the mind is thus occupied, to have compan- 
ions to whom one may talk freely of the objects and ef- 
fects of faith, seen and unseen as well. It would be little 



steenburger's story. 199 

pleasure to me to travel in the East without company, 
such as I want in this room when I talk out my inmost 
thoughts. I have heard men say that they liked to be 
alone among old ruins, that they found invisible company, 
and took delight in it. I went out to try it at Karnak 
one night, alone. It was an Egyptian night, with a moon 
almost full. The ruins were peopled with ghosts and 
phantoms by the cross-lights in the great hall of columns. 
I sat an hour in the grand aisle, then climbed to the top 
of the old north wall, and looked over the waste of splen- 
dor, all white and pure in that light. But as for enjoying 
it, it was the most absolutely miserable evening of years 
of travel, unless I except just such a night at Palmyra. It 
was full of restless, uncomfortable, tumultuous thinking. 
No one to speak to, and a tempest of thinking all the 
time, which I suppose you might call involuntary think- 
ing, with no one to think to." 

" I heard from Cairo that you had a row of some kind 
near Wady Mousa. What was it all about ? Who had 
charge of your caravan ? Barikhat or Houssein or Sheik 
Achmed ?" 

" Achmed, of course. I wrote you all about that from 
Jerusalem." 

" Your letter never came." 

"Strange; what can have become of all my letters? 
And you don't know that Achmed is dead ?" 

"Achmed? No. I saw him in 1870, and I thought 
if any man would live a century it was Achmed Ben 
Houssein." 

" Cold lead is bad for all constitutions alike." 

"Shot?" 

" Yes, poor fellow, shot. He was the best man I ever 
found among Bedouins. I always thought much of Ach- 



200 I GO A -FISHING. 

med. He was above the average of Arabs in intellectual 
ability, for he did a good deal of independent thinking on 
his own account. You told me the same thing of him 
once yourself, and I remember that you said he was the 
only Bedouin you ever knew who had any religion which 
could be called a part of him. It was true. He often 
asked questions which were really quite surprising as in- 
dications of the extent to which his reflections had carried 
him. I always talked religion with him. During my last 
journey as well as this we talked a great deal about 
Mohammed and about the Christian faith. More I think 
this time than before. 

" In the evenings, when the camp was pitched, the scene 
around us was always exceedingly impressive. At such 
times our Arabs gathered in a group close to the tent in 
which our dinner-table was set, and listened, wondering, 
to the fire of talk which we carried on in English or in 
French, until the coffee came on, and our pipes were 
alight. Then, in the fragrant air, we turned to our swarthy 
followers, who lay on the sand outside, and one or another 
would recount a story of the old times, a crusade legend, 
or a history of love and war, which I would repeat to the 
sons of the desert. You know how the love of story-list- 
ening is one of the remarkable traits of Bedouin charac- 
ter. But it is no common story that tickles their literary 
palates. It must be garnished with abundance of rhetor- 
ical figure, loaded with imagery, and sonorous with words. 
Therefore more depends on the interpreter than on the 
relater in such a case. 

"The Bible furnished material for many of these tales; 
and the stories of the patriarchs given in the Jewish ver- 
sion of them differ so entirely from the Mohammedan ver- 
sion, that they had to the listeners the freshness of new 



THE BEDOUIN. 201 

relations. Sheik Achmed would lie on the sand for hours 
listening to Hall's relation of the events in the life 
of Joseph; and I could see his keen eye light with the 
story at its salient points, and show his full appreciation 
of it. 

" ' I'll try Achmed this evening on a story out of the New 
Testament,' said Hall one day as he rode by my side ; 
and in the evening, when the stars were looking down on 
us in a deep gorge between two lofty rocks, Stephen told 
the story of the Fall of Man and the Passion of the Son 
of God. I translated it, watching Achmed's eyes. 

" It was a weird scene, that group of Bedouin listeners, 
with flashing eyes hearing the history of the king of a far 
country, who ransomed his subjects at such cost. They 
understood the story well. Every point told on their keen 
intellects, and they exchanged glances of intelligence at 
every new passage. 

" The next morning, as we were riding slowly up a val- 
ley toward the northeast, Achmed closed up by my side, 
and began a conversation. 

" ' The story that Howadji Stephano told last night — ' 

" ' Yes, Sheik Achmed.' 

" ' You think it a true story as well as the Howadji Ste- 
phano.' 

" ' I ? How know you that I think it true ?' 

" ' By your eye and voice. Besides, I have heard it be- 
fore.' 

" ' Where, and when ?' 

" ' You told me part of it once, that night we were out- 
side the Deir San Saba ; and then I heard it again from 
Father Paul, at the convent at Jebel Mousa. He told it 
to me one evening when he was shut out, for he had been 
to see a sick man in the tents of the Oulad-Said. He 



202 I GO A- FISHING. 

found the convent closed, and he slept that night in my 
tent. He was a good man, and he believed the story. I 
wish I knew more about Isa, the son of Mary.' 

" Our conversation was interrupted by the sudden ap- 
pearance, on a hill commanding our route, of a party of 
Bedouins, whom Achmed recognized on the instant as 
some of those scoundrels that inhabit the southern parts 
of Moab, but who fled as we advanced. One of their 
number, however, stood for a long time defiantly on the 
brow of the hill, and the sheik, lifting his mare to her full 
speed, crossed the valley, and commenced the ascent of 
the rocky hill on which his foe stood. The latter coolly 
swung his gun from his shoulder, and covered his ap- 
proaching enemy. In vain we shouted to Achmed. In 
vain we sent a volley of balls from our revolvers, which 
carried not half way to the hill. A puff of smoke against 
the blue sky, a rattling echo down the ravine, and Achmed 
reeled in his saddle. 

" It was all over in an instant. The enemy vanished as 
if in the smoke of his gun, and our leader lay on the rocky 
hill-side, his faithful mare standing over him. We were at 
his side in a few moments. He was badly wounded, but 
already endeavoring to stanch the fast-flowing blood. 
Lifting him carefully from his bad position among the 
rocks, we carried him down to the sandy plain, and laid 
him on his own soil, the earth to which, I had no doubt 
from the first, he must now return. 

" There was no good material with which to form it, but 
Achmed insisted that a rude camel's litter should be 
made, and with the aid of some of the baggage a sort of 
half hammock half Taktarawan was constructed, in which 
for four hours of the day he swung in great pain, and yet, 
with the firmness of a Roman, determined that he would 



WADY MOUSA. 203 

bear all to reach Wady Mousa and the Rock City before 
he should die. 

" When the evening came on we were still six hours from 
the valley of Petra. But it was agreed on all hands that 
the sheik's wishes should be strictly observed even at any 
sacrifice, and we rested only half an hour to eat and let 
the camels rest, then pushed on in the twilight. The 
moon rose and shone on our strange procession, and by 
her light we reached at length the narrow entrance of the 
valley. We had sent messengers in advance, and our 
coming was expected. A swarthy group were waiting for 
us at the door of a chamber in the rock, which had once 
been, perhaps, the hall of a palace, or mayhap the tomb 
of a prince; for it is difficult to say what was tomb or 
what was habitation of the living in this city of the ancient 
mighty. Houssein, the father of the wounded sheik, with 
the old men of his tribe, were gathered here to await our 
arrival, and received us in silence but with perfect cordi- 
ality, and gave us the words of welcome so seldom pro- 
nounced to strangers in Wady Mousa. 

" Lifting the wounded man into the place prepared for 
him, and making him as comfortable as the circumstances 
of the case would permit, we sat down around him, rest- 
ing on our baggage here and there, to await the change 
which we knew was fast coming over the Bedouin. 

" Have I said that Hall, the Englishman, was a surgeon 
in the navy ? He had pronounced the sheik's wound in- 
curable from the beginning, and now said that he had but 
a few hours to live. 

" As the gray dawn began to course up the eastern sky 
he was manifestly dying. His dark countenance, thin 
and hollow-faced at the best, was now almost spiritual in 
appearance. You who remember him will not think it 



204 I GO A -FISHING. 

strange that I apply to a Bedouin this phrase, which is 
more frequently applicable to the dying features of Chris- 
tian girls in Western homes. 

" His countenance was noble always. There is a head 
of Christ, by Titian, in the Pitti Gallery at Florence, which 
mayhap you have seen. The features are delicately out- 
lined ; the coloring not Titianesque at all, but rather un- 
certain and undecided. The face of Achmed reminded 
me of that picture when I met him first, and on this morn- 
ing it was unearthly in its serene splendor. 

"One might have thought him his father Ishmael, dying 
on the desert that was his sole inheritance. No trap- 
pings of royalty were around him, such as surround the 
couches of princes of more wealthy lands. The lands of 
this Duke of Edom were the barren desert, stretching 
away in its wastes of rock and sand. His palace was 
the ruined palace of a Roman governor, down through 
the shattered front of which the blue sky reflected the 
light of the coming day before the sun came up to shine 
in Wady Mousa. The poor burnoose — the rough cam- 
el's-hair cloak that inswathed his form — was the substi- 
tute for the purple of a kingly death-bed ; but more ma- 
jestic countenance never shone on living men than was 
his as the dawn lit its thin features, and his father bent 
over him to say that he was dying. 

" I know not what thoughts had possession of his mind, 
or whether his countenance were indeed a fair indication 
of his soul ; for his words were simple enough, but sub- 
lime enough withal to express a consciousness of his no- 
ble origin, and the splendor of his exit from the land of 
his fathers on a sunny morning in the valley of Petra. 

" ' The Hakim saith you are not to live longer, my son 
Achmed.' 



ACHMED BEN HOUSSEIN. 205 

" ' It is well. The will of God and his prophets be 
obeyed.' 

" ' What shall I do for you before you depart ? for it is 
written, " Let him order his affairs before he die, lest his 
children have trouble in their tents." ' 

" ' I have no children to be troubled, and nothing to 
cause them trouble if I had. I give Houssein my spear, 
and Khalifa my gun. The mare is yours, O my father ! 
She will bear you well until you and I are together again. 
Howadji, you are going to El-Khuds. I would have gone 
with you to the Holy City myself, but since I can not, 
here is my shawl; there is in the folds of it a sum of 
money, and the shawl itself is worth ten thousand pias- 
tres. Take the money to the priests that guard the tomb 
of Isa Ben Mariam, and give the shawl to Mohammed 
Dhunnouf, sheik of the Mesjid el-Aksa. Do this for me, 
oh Howadji Yeyeh, and add to the money you give the 
priests so much as you owe me for this journey, making 
it as large an amount as your love for me will warrant. 
I trust you fully, for you have been kind.' 

" ' Why divide the money and the cashmere, Sheik Ach- 
med ? Were it not better to give both to the sheik of 
the Dome of the Rock ?' 

" ' Not so. We Bedouins have little knowledge of re- 
ligion, though we call our faith the faith of Islam. But I 
know not whether, after all, there may not be some error 
in all this, and some truth in your faith in Isa, the son of 
Mary. My possessions are small. I am of the Beni-Is- 
mahil • but our father had no lands other than the desert, 
and we had nothing from his father Ibrahim. That which 
I have is the gift of God. I would give it back to him 
directly. I know no better way than this. Deny me 
not, O Effendi !' 



206 I GO A- FISHING. 

" ' Nay, nay, Sheik Achmed ; I will do as you wish.' 

" ' It is well. I am content' 

" The conversation had wearied him. The eyes which 
had been fixed with imploring gaze on mine closed for 
a few moments. The older sheik was silent, and now 
several of the tribe came to the door, and looking in, 
asked if he were yet at peace. All their questions were 
put in the poetic language of the desert. It was remark- 
able that no man asked in simple words, ' Is he better ?' 
or ' Is he worse ?' but every one inquired in metaphoric 
phrases, the most frequent of which was that touching in- 
quiry, ' Is it peace ?' 

" No shudder or convulsion marked the instant when 
Achmed Ben Houssein passed into the presence of Ish- 
mael his ancestor. The sun came up over the eastern 
hill, and the soft light fell on the front of the ruin in which 
he lay, and a single beam of light coming through the 
door-way at the side of the curtain touched his counte- 
nance. That mild touch awoke him. 

" He had known the sunshine on his countenance bet- 
ter than we know it in cold western countries. He and 
the sunshine were old friends, and the morning light on 
his forehead was like the familiar caress of a mother. 

" He raised his heavy eyelids and met the gaze of the 
old man who stood over him, looking intently on his face, 
and a smile, I verily believe the first smile that had cross- 
ed his countenance in years, took complete possession of 
it as he murmured, 'La Illah il Allah' (There is no de- 
ity but God); and then he hesitated, and the smile be- 
came almost a laugh of delight as he added, ' Isa Ben 
Mariam rasoul Allah !' (Jesus the son of Mary is the 
messenger of God !) 

" Sheik Houssein did not indicate, by look or sign, that 



DEATH OF ACHMED. 207 

he approved or disapproved the creed in which his son 
was dying, thus announced in his last breath. Achmed 
gazed into his father's eyes longingly and steadfastly, as 
if seeking some approval or dissent; but finding neither, 
the smile on his countenance changed to a look of anxi- 
ety, even of pain, and then he stretched his tall form on 
the floor, and without sigh or moan or utterance of any 
kind the son of the desert was dust like the old dust 
around him. 

" In the afternoon the Alaween dug a grave for their 
dead brother in the burial-place of his people, and, wrap- 
ping around him the clothes in which he died, they car- 
ried him out to burial. The procession was not large. 
The women rent the air with their occasional shrill cries, 
but this was only formality. He had left no wife or chil- 
dren, and his father was too old to mourn for such events. 
Seven tall sons had he buried like this one, and the 
eighth grave was filled up in the afternoon sunlight." 

The night was far advanced before we were tired of 
talking. By midnight the hotel had sunk into a profound 
silence, though more than seven hundred persons were 
sleeping in it and the surrounding buildings. We should 
have talked the night through if the Doctor had not in- 
terrupted us with a stentorian snore. So we made our 
camp on the floor and the diwans, and the morning sun, 
coming over Eagle Cliff, caught us there. 



XL 

ON A MOUNTAIN BROOK. 

The Pemigewasset flows out from Profile Lake, a swift 
brook, receiving at almost every fifty rods the water of a 
greater or less cold spring, and by the time it crosses the 
Plymouth Road, five miles down the valley, is a strong 
stream. In traveling this distance it descends several 
hundred feet, and the entire course is in dense forest, ex- 
cept a few rods of open country at the Lafayette clearing. 
Its water is of that pure transparency which characterizes 
a few of our American mountain brooks. You can see 
the bottom at ten feet depth about as clearly as if look- 
ing through air. 

After crossing the road it lapses along over a pebbly 
bottom for a fourth of a mile, and then plunges into a 
deep rocky ravine, cascade after cascade, falling some 
three or four hundred feet in less than two hundred rods, 
until it reaches "the Pool." Deep holes abound among 
the rocks all along the course. But it is of no use to try 
fly-fishing on this river, for, in the first place, there is no 
chance for a cast, and, in the second place, the trout will 
not rise to a fly at any season of the year. Perhaps this 
is due to the marvelous clearness of the water, but I will 
not undertake to assign a reason. 

Many visitors at the Profile House have fished the river 
down to the bridge. Few have attempted to go through 



THE PEMIGEWASSET. 2O0 

the wild gorge below. Dupont and myself have often 
done it, but never with so great difficulty as in the sum- 
mer of 1872, when, in consequence of the continuous rain, 
the river was very high and strong. 

" Will you fish a brook to-morrow ?" I said to Dupont 
as we were parting at midnight. 

" What brook do you want to fish ?" 

" The Pemigewasset, below the bridge." 

" Can we get through with the water as high as now ?" 

" We can try." 

And so we met at an early breakfast, and were off down 
the valley with Jack and the buck-board before the sun 
was up. The sound of the water in the Basin was thun- 
derous. I confess that I began to think of backing out, 
but I said nothing. At the Basin we put on our wading 
trousers and went in. 

It was a clear, cool day, with a soft breeze shaking the 
birch-leaves and cooling our heads, which would other- 
wise have been very hot while our feet were in the cold 
water. For the temperature of the Pemigewasset is sel- 
dom above forty-five. 

For me there is always more pleasure to be derived 
from fishing a brook than from any other angling. Flow- 
ing water is always attractive, and every rod of this river 
is exquisitely beautiful. 

The piscatorial dilettante is fond of condemning bait- 
fishing as a low business. I differ from him. It is a fine 
art, and in all the classics of our art-history has taken 
high rank. If the test be found in the amount of skill re- 
quired for its practice, then without dispute it ranks as 
high as fly-fishing. I grant freely that sitting in a boat 
or on a lake-shore and fishing for trout with a deep line 
and a float is not one of the fine arts. Any one can do 
O 



2IO I GO A -FISHING. 

it. But I know very few men who can fish a brook with 
bait as it should be done. I could do it better myself 
forty years ago than now, for the boy along the brook 
learns a thousand lessons that he forgets as he grows 
older. 

There is little choice of bait, but there is something 
in even that. Never give up a deep hole in which you 
have reason to think tbere are good trout until you have 
exhausted your resources. The angle-worm is your main 
reliance, but if that does not take, try the tail of a small 
trout, or a bright-colored fin, or, if you can find it, a red- 
fin's tail or fin. These last we do not find in the Pemige- 
wasset, where trout and only trout inhabit. Sometimes 
nothing is so taking as a grasshopper, at another time the 
eye of a trout, and often the red gill will attract large fish. 

But the best of bait will be of no avail if you do not fish 
with care and skill. Trout will seldom take bait when 
they see you, or if they do, it will be with a sudden dash 
out from under a bank or log or rock, and as sudden a 
rush back. Then the chances are in favor of your losing 
trout and hook, for the fish have a marvelous aptitude for 
winding a line around twigs and roots and stakes. 

In most brooks the fish are found in deep holes, at the 
foot of a fall or a rapid, under a bank, or under over- 
hanging rocks. But in others they will be lying in the 
lower end of each deep pool where it shoals up to the out- 
flow. In swift rapids they lie in small eddies, watching 
for what comes down stream. Their eye-sight is marvel- 
ously keen. And it must be borne in mind that however 
rough the surface of clear water may be, the water itself 
below the surface is a solid medium like glass, so, that a 
fish under water sees in all directions as we do in the air 
when the wind blows. I have seen a trout start from a 



THE BASIN. 211 

point forty feet distant for a bait thrown into the Pemige- 
wasset and take it, and I was so much surprised that I 
measured the distance. 

With either fly or bait I prefer to fish a stream down- 
ward. This is contrary to many authorities, but is the 
result of my own experience. I make no account of the 
fact that fish lie with their heads up stream. They have 
no eyes in their tails, but they see backward with sharp 
vision. The dash and foam of the waterfall hides the 
angler effectually from the fish as he comes down stream 
to a pool, and rougher water is usually found in the upper 
part of every good trout -hole. Fish lying under the 
rough surface see out plainly enough down stream, 
through the glassy water and the smooth surface at the 
lower end of the pool. Where the fall is strong and the 
foam abundant, you may come down to the very edge of 
the pool from above, and take trout from within three feet 
of your stand. 

It seems, too, that trout are less likely to be frightened 
by an angler wading the brook than by one on the bank. 
Why this is I leave for others to explain, but I have known 
many a trout to rise between my very feet at a fly trailing 
from my hand while I stood in the middle of a rapid. 

All visitors at the Profile House know the Basin, a 
great hollow in the granite rock, around which for some 
thousands of years the river has swept boulders until they 
have worn this mighty bowl, now holding some fifteen 
feet of transparent water, into which the river descends in 
a cataract, and from which it rushes out through a cleft in 
the granite and plunges into a pool below. I never took 
a trout in the Basin. It is a singular illustration of a 
habit of trout, which I think is well confirmed, namely, 
that they will not lie in a hole, however inviting, between 



212 I GO A -FISHING. 

two cascades. Trout do not ascend perpendicular falls 
of any great height, nor do they descend them of their 
own free will. They are timid fish, and desire a clear run 
in case of danger, and it is probably this prevision and 
provision for flight which leads them to be shy of all 
pools which lie between cascades. 

We fished the river a few rods down from the Basin, 
then crossed the woods fifty or a hundred rods to the 
Cascade brook, which runs into the Pemigewasset a half- 
mile below. This is one of the finest brooks in America 
for scenery, as well as for small trout. It comes down a 
thousand feet in the course of a mile or two, and its last 
descent is over a smooth broad face of granite, a hundred 
feet wide, and sloping steeply two or three hundred feet. 
Along this slide the brook sometimes wanders hither and 
thither, from side to side, as if hesitating to hurry down ; 
but in high water it is a broad and mighty torrent, white 
as snow, roaring and dashing itself in great masses of 
foam high in the air, and covering all the slope from for- 
est to forest. 

We found the stream lower in comparison than the 
Pemigewasset, and commencing at the foot of the slope 
we fished it down to the junction. The supply of trout in 
all these streams is something wonderful. It never mat- 
ters whether we fish side by side or follow one another. 
After one has apparently exhausted a pool, the other com- 
ing a little after will find it well stocked with fish, who 
had taken refuge under rocks while the first was there, or 
who have rushed up to it as he passed down stream. 

We had a short dispute as to the proprietorship of a 
small trout. We threw into a pool together, standing on 
opposite sides of it, and as we lifted out each his trout 
there was but one between us, swinging in mid-air over 



WINE FOR LUNCHEON. 213 

the pool on both rods. The quick fellow had taken both 
hooks before his companions could get hold of either. 
He had companions, for we took a half-dozen out of the 
same pool. 

Our favorite luncheon-place is on a large rock at the 
junction of the Cascade brook with the Pemigewasset. 
Here is a deep pool under the rock, a dense overhanging 
shade, and across the Pemigewasset close by the edge of 
the river runs the road, yet shut from view of it by thick 
brush. Many a day we have sat on that rock and seen 
the wagons go by with loads of visitors from the hotel to 
the Flume, and have recognized through the openings in 
the trees familiar faces from the city, faces of friends who 
would hardly have recognized us had they seen us in fish- 
ing costume. 

We reached the rock at two o'clock or thereabouts, and 
after taking ten or a dozen trout from the pool, sat down in 
the shade, or rather stretched ourselves on the rock. A 
bottle of the red blood of the Beaune grapes was lying in 
the sunshine while we had been fishing the pool, and 
when we had rested a half-hour or so was in perfect con- 
dition. This, with a sandwich, made our luncheon. I 
have yet to meet with the angler of experience who uses 
strong drinks while fishing. It is especially bad for one 
who is wading a cold brook to carry and use whisky or 
brandy. The tendency of blood to the head, caused by 
cold at the lower extremities, is enough without the help 
of alcohol in condensed form. Dupont and myself have 
fished together more or less for many years, and after 
some experience we have agreed on a light Burgundy as 
the best wine for luncheon in the woods. So the bottle 
occupies a place in one of the baskets, and its room is 
wanted at just about the time we want the wine. 



214 : G0 A- FISHING. 

" Effendi," said Dupont, as he laid down the last frag- 
ment of a sandwich which he could not master, and then 
stretched himself on the rock and lighted a cigar, " did 
you ever make any estimate of the amount of time that 
you have passed in this business of ' going a-fishing ?' " 

"What, all told?" 

"Yes, all told and added up." 

"No, never; but I fancy it would add up some years." 

" So much ?" 

" Yes, we are often astonished when we count up time 
which we have spent without keeping the record. It slips 
away more easily than money, and the sum total of ex- 
penditure will sometimes startle, and may well alarm us 
unless we have something to show for it. You sleep 
somewhat more than six hours a day, but suppose it to 
be only six ; that is, one fourth of twenty-four hours. If 
you live to be eighty years old, you will have passed 
twenty years of your life in a state of unconsciousness. 
Your breakfast, luncheon, dinner, and coffee occupy you, 
or should occupy you at least two hours each day, so that 
at eighty you will have spent more than six years in feed- 
ing. I know gentlemen who ride daily to and from their 
places of business in railway cars, passing two or three 
hours of the day in this transit, who would be surprised 
if it were brought to their notice that they pass one month 
or more each year, or one whole year in every twelve, in- 
side of a railway carriage." 

" And men waste life in this fearful way ?" 

" It is the order of nature, and the result of our modern 
systems of life and labor. The sleep is no waste of time. 
The Creator intended it to be so ; but it is well for men, 
in looking at life, to think that short as it is the working 
hours are vastly shorter, and that one fourth is always to 



SLEEP. 215 

be deducted from any apparent view of a period devoted 
to life or labor or love. Sometimes that brevity of time 
for love is an overwhelming thought. We look forward 
to a dear companionship of years. We give to that com- 
panionship how much ? I know many a man who loves 
his family with devoted affection, but who gives ten hours 
each day to business, and six to sleep, and thus can count 
in every twenty years only seven which he has passed in 
their society. I do not find fault with him to whom labor 
is a necessity, but it is beyond question a wrong to him- 
self and others in the case of one who has no actual need 
to keep on working ; and surely it is a grand error in the 
modern social structure that the styles of life, the require- 
ments of social position, the luxuries that have become 
necessities of our artificial life, compel this vast sacrifice 
of the affections. It is more than a sacrifice of affection, 
for it has its effect on the character, and so on the nations 
and the age. But what's the use of talking about it. We 
can't reform it. Only, my boy, it's pleasant, lying on this 
rock and watching the water, to think that when the rough 
and tumble is over — when we have had our play in the 
forests, and have done our work in the factories — when 
we have gotten through the alternations of sunshine and 
shade, light and darkness, labor and rest, there will be an 
end of it, where there will be no more sleeping." 

"What ! no sleep in heaven ? I'm not so sure of that. 
Sleep is one of the blessings. You know, ' He giveth his 
beloved sleep.' " 

" A beautiful passage, and one that it seems very hard 
to erase from our Bibles : but, you know, it does not be- 
long there. The correct translation of the Hebrew is, 
'He giveth to his beloved asleep.' God's gifts are often 
unsought, unforeseen, and come without our seeking or 



2l6 I GO A -FISHING. 

working for them. 'Except the Lord build the house, 
they labor in vain that build it. Except the Lord keep 
the city, the watchman waketh but in vain. It is vain 
for you to rise up early, to sit up late, to eat the bread of 
sorrows. He giveth to his beloved while they sleep.' 
No, sir, there is no night and no sleep there, and no 
need of sleep, for the eternal joys are not to be weari- 
some." 

"But you don't believe that we are to lead a life of 
eternal repose there. I can't say that I have any fancy 
for the heaven that some people look to, of everlasting 
quiet and calm and rest. Is labor then necessarily pain 
that men think it a blessing to get rid of it ?" 

" For them that labor and are heavy laden, there is rest 
there ; but I agree with you in believing that the rest is 
only refreshment for eternal work and the enjoyment of 
it. The keenest sense of happiness which man has here, 
is found in doing something for the objects of his affec- 
tion. The most perfect contentment is to be found in 
being useful. I often wonder what ideas Augustine had. 
He used a word once which made me fancy that with all 
his eloquent thought about heaven, of which his works are 
so full, he never quite appreciated it." 

"The word?" 

" He said ' Ibi vacabimus' — I don't like that word vaca- 
bimns — ' Ibi vacabimus et videbimus, videbimus et amabi- 
mus, amabimus et laudabimus. Ecce quod erit in fine sine 
fine.' I remember the passage because I often say it over 
to myself, and it closes his greatest work, 'De Civitate 
Dei.' But I don't believe the life hereafter will be any 
such as is properly expressed by that word vacabimus. 
Old friend, I was taught from childhood to believe in a 
local heaven. We shall be there with these eyes of ours. 



SMALL TROUT. 217 

I never see this glorious river rushing by us, pure and 
clear and strong, but I think — I think — how many hours I 
have sat here thinking 'Are there no rocks in the streams 
that flow in the celestial fields ? Is the river that runs 
clear as crystal always a calm smooth stream, or does it 
not sometimes leap and flash in the holy light and add 
its voice to the grand harmonies ?' No, no, it can't be 
there a long calm, a never-ending uniformity of existence. 
Oh for a breath of the winds that toss the hair and fan 
the cheeks of the white-robed ! Oh for a drop of the 
spray from the crystal stream ! Oh for an hour among 
those hills where the winds blow in tempests of joy, where 
cataract answers to cataract in riotous music. But the 
day is hurrying along. Let us start." 

So we went down stream. 

" Isn't it a glorious afternoon ? Throw down yonder. 
I saw the wave of a fin in the eddy under that rock — 
good — a half-pounder, the best fish to-day." 

"Yes, and the best this season in the Pemigewasset. 
I believe the trout in this brook never would grow large. 
Can they be a small variety, a species that do not exceed 
a quarter of a pound except in rare instances of mon- 
sters ?" 

My friend's idea was one that I have often had. I have 
fished this river for a great many years, and I never took 
but one trout weighing a pound in it, and he was probably 
a wanderer from the lake. It is just possible, however, 
that all the large fish go up into Profile Lake, and all the 
small fish come down into the brook. The Cascade 
brook, however, is different. Here at the junction we 
often take such fish as that half-pounder, and as we go 
up we find the run of trout much larger than in the Pem- 
igewasset, until we come to the Moran Lake brook. In 



2l8 I GO A -FISHING. 

that we have good fish, and the lake is crowded with large 
and small fish. We have killed a great many pound and 
some two-pound fish in it, and we see thousands of small 
fry. 

" Isn't that a beauty ?" 

I was lifting out a small Pemigewasset trout. Of all 
fish in the world I think they are the most beautiful. 
They look like translucent fish, or as if there was a light 
in them shining out through a pearl skin, which has a soft, 
peachy, flesh tint, with spots of gold and red standing out 
of it. The clearness of their tints is due to the purity of 
the water. The color of a trout depends on the water he 
is in, and on the position of his latest repose. Lying in 
the dark he becomes dark, and lying in sunshine he loses 
all his dark tints. The change is effected in a brief time. 
An hour or two will suffice to change a black trout into a 
bright light color, and vice versa. A dead trout bleaches 
rapidly. If you place your trout at night in a flowing 
stream of water, you will find in the morning that all the 
dark color in the skin is gone. If a trout just killed is 
allowed to lie on the bottom of a boat or on a wet board, 
he will change his color where the skin touches the board 
in fifteen minutes. The variation in tint is no indication 
of difference in species. In a pond in the northern Adi- 
rondack region, known as Bay Pond, the trout have a very 
singular characteristic. They are sprinkled with small 
black spots over all parts of the body, as if peppered for 
the table. These spots are in the skin under the scale, 
and would seem to be the result ©f disease. But the 
trout are vigorous and healthy, fine irrflavor and firm in 
meat, and have the reputation of being very strong for 
their weight. This peculiarity is found on fish of all 
sizes, but I have never seen a troujhof less than two years' 



THE TORRENT. 2IQ 

age from this pond, and am unable to say at how early a 
time the spots appear. 

We had resumed our rods, and were wading side by 
side down the river. From the junction of the Cascade 
brook the Pemigewasset flows in a rapid stream over 
rocks, without any deep holes, till it reaches the bridge. 
Few trout are to be found along this reach. Just above 
and just below the bridge we found plenty of small fish, 
and on this day we counted seventy from the still water 
below. Then we pushed on down -stream to the gorge. 
The torrent had become fierce and strong, and the roar 
at the head of the first fall was so loud that we could not 
hear each other shout at ten paces' distance. Every 
plunge of the river now went into a deep pool, from 
which we took several fish, averaging about a quarter of 
a pound, with an occasional larger one. It was no longer 
possible to wade, except close along the edges, nor often 
there. At one spot we paused, where the stream nar- 
rowed between high rocks. On the right bank a smooth 
slope of rock fell into ten feet of rushing foam, the upper 
edge of the slope, skirted with brush, some twenty feet 
above the water. The left bank showed a ledge of rock 
down which one might go, if it were possible to cross. I 
tried the passage cautiously, step by step, careful to se- 
cure the position of one foot before I lifted the other. In 
mid-stream, with three feet of wild water sweeping around 
me, I looked back and saw Dupont working along the 
sloping rock, almost over my head, holding by the bushes, 
and swinging himself along hand over hand for twenty 
feet, until he reached a ledge below. How he held his*'' 
rod I can not imagine. I crossed, and we did not speak 
to each other for a half-hour after that. The thunder of 
the river rose between us. When I rejoined him it was 



220 I GO A-FISHING. 

by a series of long leaps from rock to rock, on one of 
which my wet boots slipped, and I sat down, slid forward, 
and lost my momentum only on the edge of the stone. 
Six inches farther would have ended my fishing experi- 
ence, for the strongest swimmer would have had his 
brains dashed out in that wild fall of water. Again and 
again we climbed the rocks two hundred feet, to descend 
again within two rods of where we had left the stream. 
Perhaps this sounds like folly. The folly, if there were 
any, was in starting at all down the gorge. Once started, 
there is no turning back, for after the first few rods down 
that ravine the easiest way out is to go through. 

We slipped side by side down a smooth rock, unable to 
stay the swift descent by any grasp of the fingers or 
pressure of the palms, and brought up, a mass of rods, 
baskets, and fishermen, in a heap of moss. 

"When will you remember to leave that ring at home, 
instead of wearing it in such work as this ?" said Dupont. 

I acknowledged the error, as I had several times be- 
fore, and transferred the ring from finger to pocket. " Ars 
est longa, vita brevis," said I, as I gathered myself and 
my traps together, and sat down to take breath in the 
comparative silence of the nook into which we had fallen. 

" Apropos of what is that very trite remark ?" 

" The ring. If, as some have supposed, the soul of the 
artist lingers around his beautiful work, what an odd scene 
Solon must think this. When he engraved that ring, I 
fancy he did not expect to follow it to this wild gorge. 
If he follows any of his work he follows this, for more 
perfect never left his hands. Cupid is living, breathing, 
struggling, as he reaches out his hands to catch and clasp 
the fluttering Psyche. What a perfect statue is the little 
fellow now that this sunshine lights the sard." 



FISHING AND TALKING. 221 

" Cupid and Psyche in the gorge of the Pemigewasset ! 
Push on, Effendi, and take a trout out of that pool." 

" My dear fellow, what is out of place in these fishing 
days of ours ? Have we not talked of every subject un- 
der and many above the skies along the bank of this 
river ? Don't you remember that day when we were sit- 
ting on the rock under the bridge, and Doctor was 

with us ? He had worked hard at the trout, had taken 
fifty, and was drawing his hook artistically in the deep 
rapid : I thought he was intent on trout. Not he. He 
came down suddenly on me with a question about Bac- 
trian coins, of which I knew as much as I knew about the 
currency of the moon. He could not tell when I asked 
him what had suggested such a question in connection 
with trout-fishing ; but I fancy it was by a rapid series of 
thoughts. He thinks about as much in old languages as 
in English, and either an old Greek word for a rod or staff 
(fiaKTTjpia), or the sight of a frog, not uncommon, and the 
Greek fiarpaxos, had suggested Bactria, and off we start- 
ed on a numismatic discussion, which carried us from the 
Ionian shores all along the coasts of Greece, and even to 
Sicily and Italy." 

Every man seems to find in the gentle art abundant 
suggestion and opportunity of thinking about his own 
special hobby, if he have one. I had the evidence of this 
that day. For ten minutes after we had started again 
down the ravine I was sitting again on a rock, looking at 
the lofty cliffs, and recognizing a resemblance in the 
scene to a wonderful engraving by Diirer, in many re- 
spects the finest illustration of thought ever put on paper 
in the form of a picture. Of course I mean " The Knight 
and Death." So I lost myself in a trot, "all alone by 
myself," on one of my hobbies, namely, the early history 



222 I GO A-FISHING. 

of illustration by pictures ; and while I was cantering 
away on this, Dupont went wading and climbing, climb- 
ing and wading down stream, and when I came to my 
senses I had lost him, or he had lost me, which is much 
the same. He had actually passed me without seeing me 
or being seen, and I thought he must still be up stream. 
In fishing such water, anglers should keep near each 
other. An accident may well happen ; and a broken limb 
or a sprained ankle would be a serious business to one 
alone in that gorge, whence in such case he could only 
get out by sending for stout assistance. I sat a half- 
hour, then went a few rods down, and fortunately found 
Dupont's foot-print still wet on a flat rock. Then I pushed 
on, and a hundred yards below saw him sitting, where he 
had been waiting a half-hour for me. He had reached 
the Ultima Thule of that day's sport, and as I was not 
there he knew he must have passed me. 

Below us the stream plunged down the heaviest cata- 
ract in the gorge, and the rocks rose perpendicular a hun- 
dred feet on each side. The first time we went down 
there we were an hour in getting out. Back we could not 
go, for the last few rods had been by leaps downward from 
rock to rock, which we could not climb to return. At last 
we discovered a way out, and we have used it often since. 
Climbing a singular mass of rocks, covered with brush 
and, on its top, with some large trees, we found the trunk 
of a fallen tree reaching over a chasm some thirty feet 
deep and full twenty wide. The branches were nearly 
all gone, such as remained only serving to bother our feet 
as we walked across it, and then dug our finger-nails in 
the roughnesses of a sloping face of granite which came 
down from bushes fifty feet or so above. Up this we 
crawled on hands and knees, in fact flat on our faces once 



A RIDE TO POLLARD'S. 223 

in a while, till we could grasp a bush, then up on our 
feet, and along the hill-top to the path which leads from 
the Flume House to the pool, and so up to the road 
where the good horse Jack with the buck-board was wait- 
ing for us. 

A day's fishing like this gives us no large fish, and so 
many small ones that we seldom count them. We often 
have from four to five hundred trout in our baskets as the 
result of such a day on the Pemigewasset. 

There is much to be found besides trout in the valley 
of the Pemigewasset, and he is not a thoroughly skilled 
angler who has failed to learn the pleasure of finding 
people and character and life in instructive forms as he 
goes along a brook. 

The morning after our fishing the river was lowery and 
threatening. The clouds hung low and the mountain- 
tops were invisible. But with a conviction that the day, 
would not after all be rainy, I determined to go down the 
valley and up the East Branch to Pollard's, to make some 
inquiries about the possibility and practicability of an ex- 
pedition up that valley and over the Willey Mountain to 
the Crawford Notch and Crawford House. 

We did not get away till noon, and then found the 
roads in bad order from heavy rain in the night. 

The clouds were lifting, but their aspect on the mount- 
ain-sides was full of solemn magnificence. Here and 
there they were lit with sunshine vainly seeking to burst 
through them, and where these lights occurred the white 
mists seemed full of life, moving in wild circles or hurry- 
ing back and forth as if in feeble fright at their approach- 
ing evanishment. Far down the valley, under the long 
line of sombre clouds, there was a break of blue in the 
distant sky, and from our high position we seemed to look 



224 I G0 A -FISHING. 

down to it. The roar of the Pemigewasset all along the 
road for miles was like the sound of Niagara. For we 
had had heavy rains of late, and the rivers were swollen 
and strong. Mountain-top was bound to mountain-top 
by the great mass of cloud. We traveled under a vast 
arch of gloom. 

Two miles below the Flume House are the first mill- 
dams on the river, and as trout will rise to a fly here and 
lower down the river, I pulled up to try a few casts under 
the first dam. The behavior of a trout-rod is sometimes 
inexplicable. I had with me this morning a heavy fly- 
rod, which in case of need I could use as a bait-rod. It 
was a good rod, had done excellent service, and I thought 
was trusty. I was casting only twenty feet of line, and at 
the third or fourth cast, snap went the second joint close 
at the ferrule. The occurrence is not uncommon, nor 
does it ordinarily require much time to repair such a dam- 
age, which is one of the least importance to which rods 
are liable. I kindled a small fire of drift-wood, extracted 
the ferrule from that of the butt, burned out the broken 
wood, replaced it on the second joint, and cast again. A 
small fish, not over four ounces, rose to the fly. I struck 
him as gently as if he were a butterfly, and snap went the 
tip, at half its length. There were extra tips in the rod- 
case in the wagon, and one was soon substituted, and 
again I began to cast. I took a half-dozen fish, and then, 
as I was trying to throw a fly very lightly through an 
opening in the falling sheet of water and on to the still 
water behind the sheet and under the dam, I threw two 
thirds of the rod away, as the butt broke with a long di- 
agonal split from the ferrule upward. 

A writer on gaming recommends his pupils never to run 
against luck, but when they find it decidedly bad, to aban- 



GEORGIANA FALLS. 225 

don play for the time. It is sometimes a good rule for 
anglers, but for the reason that such occurrences, the 
successive breakings of a rod, or repeated snarls in 
one's line, or the recurring loss of heavy fish after hook- 
ing them, may almost always be charged to the condition 
of body or mind in which the angler is fishing. It is 
nine times out of ten his fault and not his misfortune. 
Don't abuse your rod when the blame belongs to your- 
self. 

A plenty of silk thread, waxed with shoemaker's wax. 
is a part of the necessary outfit for a day's fishing. It 
should be in the pocket of every fly-book, and in every 
pocket of every suit of fishing clothes. It can't be too 
abundant. With a good knife and plenty of thread one 
can build a rod in the woods or repair any break. But I 
took the hint that my right arm must be out of order, and 
having spliced the butt I made no more attempts at cast- 
ing under the mill-dam. 

Half a mile below, however, we crossed the Georgiana 
brook just above its junction with the Pemigewasset. 
This brook rises far back in the mountains in an elevated 
basin, where lie Bog Pond and Bog Eddy, famous for large 
trout and plenty, but of poor flavor. The Georgiana Falls 
were visited in old times by scenery hunters, reached 
only by a long walk up the mountain from the Flume 
House. They well repaid much toil. Of late years the 
path has been abandoned, and it is now many years since 
the falls have sunk into almost oblivion. But they plunge 
down the rocky wall as yellow in their foam as ever, for 
this water is of a deep dark color, and from such water 
trout seldom come without the woody flavor. 

I lingered but a few moments near the bridge, and took 
out a half-dozen small fish, all nearly black. Ten rods 

P 



226 I GO A-FISHING. 

below, at the junction, in the clear water of the Pemige- 
wasset, I took two fair-sized fish, shining like silver tinged 
with peach blossoms. The difference of water makes all 
the difference of color. 

Rejoining L in the wagon, we drove on, and about 

two o'clock, well down the valley, in a lonesome place 
among the mountains, we pulled up in front of a small 
house, and asked if we could get there feed for horse and 
man. "For horse, yes; for man, go in and ask." We 
went in. It was an ancient house for these parts, and 
we found in it only one person — a representative of the 
ancient days. She was an old woman — that was evident 
— but cheery and happy in voice and action. 

" Can you give us something to eat, Mrs. T ?" 

"Well, that depends on what you want to have." 

" How about bread and milk ?" 

" I can give you plenty of that, and I've got some pork 
and beans in the oven." 

" Good. We'll have the pork and beans first, and then 
the bread and milk." 

So the old lady bustled about, and set a round table, 
and spread a clean cloth and put on it two plates and 
two bowls, and opened the oven and brought out a great 
pot of smoking beans and set before us, all the while chat- 
ting gently, very gently, and pleasantly and cheerily, al- 
beit her hands were sorely trembling with the feebleness 
of age. 

" How long have you lived in this valley, Mrs. T ?" 

" More than fifty years. How old do you think I am ?" 

"I can't guess; but I know you have done your share 
of work, and it is time for you to rest." 

" Yes, my folks think I'm too old to do much work. 
I'm eighty-seven years old." 



EIGHTY- SEVEN YEARS. 227 

There, my friend, is a subject for your thoughtful con- 
sideration. Eighty-seven years, as we poor mortals count 
years by the swing of the globe, and fifty of them in this 
narrow valley between two mountains ! Eighty - seven 
peaceful years ! Eighty-seven tempestuous years ! Which 
had they been ? It matters little whether they who travel 
this pilgrimage of life travel in lonesome valleys or in 
crowded city streets. Life every where is calm or stormy, 
as God gives it, and there are tempests that shake the 
soul of man or of woman in mountain recesses as fierce 
as the storms that sweep over us in the deserts that we 
call social life. 

But I think sometimes that the memories of old age, 
such as hers must be, are greatly to be envied ; and, after 
I had paid for our dinner and we were driving along the 
wild road up the East Branch, I began to imagine what 
hers perhaps might be, and to contrast them with my own 
memories of a more brief, but doubtless, in most men's 
estimation, more eventful life. 

Looking out of her windows in the evening she saw 
the sunlight shining on the mountain-top as he had shone 
for fifty years, and the same tall pine-tree on the summit 
had in all those years been the last purple beacon of each 
departing day. The mountains are not so high to her 
old eyes as they used to be, for heaven has come down 
nearer to her. It is a blessing of old age, when it does 
not seem so much that the weary pilgrimage is tending 
upward toward the land of rest, as that the blessed coun- 
try is somehow brought nearer, as if it had come down 
from God. For John, in his old age, saw the Holy City 
descending ; and many, like the aged watcher in Patmos, 
have learned to look upward and say, "Come, Lord," in- 
stead of saying, "Take me away." And most of all this 



228 I GO A-FISHING. 

is true of those who have outlived the beloved of old 
time ; for the gathering feet of the dear ones gone press 
down the very blue above us, and bring heaven very near. 
Down the valley a little way is the grave-yard in which 
she had laid a great many dear forms of affection, and 
had seen her stout sons cover them out of her sight with 
the valley earth. A great many I say, but we who live in 
crowds all our lives might think the number few. There 
are only eleven inhabitants in the township in which she 
lives. There are something more than twice eleven sleep- 
ers in the grave-yard, but she knew them all, every one 
of them — old as well as young, and, standing by their 
graves, she could tell you the story of each one's life and 
sorrow or joy and death. We live among cemeteries 
where we hesitate to leave our dead, in cold and lonesome 
solitude, among strangers by the thousand. Here they 
who sleep near each other are all of them old friends, or 
the children of friends, and it is not so hard to leave the 
dear ones in such company. 

The epochs in her life are all marked in the grave- 
yard. The great events to which her memory goes back 
with most profound regard are there registered. Nature 
around her was unchanged, unchanging. Sunshine and 
storm, indeed, alternated on the mountain-sides, but the 
very alternation had a sameness that was like the hills 
themselves. Only, from time to time, when God gave her 
sorrow, in floods like the spring floods of the Pemigewas- 
set, she bowed and was well-nigh overwhelmed, but the 
mountains were the same every morning though the storm 
had been fierce in the night, and so at length she grew to 
be like them, unchanged by flood or storm, only purified. 
What a little world this valley home has been for fifty 
years ! 



WOMEN IN HEAVEN. 229 

Do not imagine, my friend, that the great trials of your 
life, the strifes and agonizings which you have gone 
through, are peculiar. In some sense they may be so, 
and every heart knows his own bitterness; but God on his 
white throne saw with the same infinite tenderness the 
anguish of the old woman in the Pemigewasset valley 
and the anguish of emperor or pope mourning for the be- 
loved dead; and there are thousands of just such homes, 
and in every home a sorrow, in every home a memory 
that comes with the twilight, and grows mighty in the 
dark night, and over every one, above mountain-top and 
cloud and storm, the everlasting pity of the Master. 

But why dwell on sorrows when, as I told you, she was 
cheery and bright, and it was evident abundantly that she 
had no heavy load of memory to carry. Life had rippled 
along as the river rippled over its rocky bed, flashing in 
the light of the sun, glowing silver-bright under the moon, 
gleaming with reflected starlight. There had been dark 
days and days of flood, but after a little the current went 
gently on in its old channel, and made music for itself. 
Why should she be sad ? Life is not so well worth living 
that the other life is not better, and that other has more 
abundant joy, even of the sort that we best love here. 
The hills of heaven shine with more serene glory than 
these hills of ours, and when she has lived in some valley 
of the holy land, long, long after these granite hills are 
crumbled and gone, she will not feel old, but ever young 
— forever young. 

I once asked a learned Mohammedan in Egypt wheth- 
er he believed that women would go to heaven (for it is 
an error to think that houries are mere women), and what 
he thought of the Prophet's saying that there are no old 
women there. He replied, giving what is I believe the 



230 I GO A- FISHING. 

orthodox creed of Islam, that women will be saved like 
men, and will all be made young again — except one wom- 
an. And her story is somewhat interesting. When Jo- 
seph was viceroy in Egypt he was riding out one day 
near Memphis, and an old woman seizing him by the 
knee demanded charity. He turned to look at her, and 
was so shocked at her appearance that he involuntarily 
exclaimed " How terribly homely you are." 

" Then why don't you pray to your God, who answers 
all your prayers, and ask him to make me beautiful ?" 

Whereupon Joseph lifted up his hands and prayed for 
her, and instantly beheld her, standing by him, young and 
lovely, so lovely that he loved her and made her his wife; 
and she grew old and died long after him, and went to 
heaven and is an old woman there, and the only old 
woman in heaven, for God makes all good women 
young again once, but only once, and she can never 
be made young again. An Egyptian village perpetu- 
ates in its name (Badrashain) the story of this wife of 
Joseph. 

Eternal youth ! Why is it that we are all so fond of 
this idea of youth, and constantly in our dreams of eter- 
nal blessedness thinking of ourselves and our friends as 
there to be young? The youth of heaven is not to be 
what we call youth here. There is freshness and purity 
in the young soul, but I fancy we think too much of the 
body and its vigor and beauty when we picture the joys 
of heaven. There is a greater beauty, a more stately and 
impressive and winning beauty, a certain beatitude some- 
times in extreme old age unknown to the most brilliant 
youth. Measuring time by our very insufficient stand- 
ards, we call eighty years old age, but the eternal youth 
of heaven is youth because eternity stretches forever be- 



THE STREAM OF LIFE. 23 1 

fore it, and there is no period of maturity — much less of 
feeble age to which it looks forward. 

Standing in front of the house in which the old lady 
had given us our simple meal, I could look up the valley 
ten miles to the very head, where I knew a spring of 
clear cold water poured out under a lofty rock. For 
fifty years she had looked up the valley daily, and as the 
years passed she must have thought often that the view 
was very like her own view back through the way she 
had traveled. The spring spreads first into a silver lake, 
whose beauty is beyond words to describe. So her child- 
hood passed into sunlit youth, where we all of us linger 
longest in the journey of life. " Hie breve vivitur," said 
Bernard, and then added, " hie breve plangitur, hie breve 
fletur." Life is short, but so too are its sorrow and 
mourning, and for most of us youth is long joy, full of de- 
lights. But the stream leaves the lake and plunges into 
the forest, struggling along through masses of tangled 
brush, and over the trunks of fallen trees and in dark 
ravines, receiving strength as it progresses, and overcom- 
ing with steadfast purpose all opposing obstacles. Then 
it sweeps along for miles in a glorious current, here lit by 
sunshine, there shaded by masses of rich verdure, until it 
enters a mountain gorge and goes down successive cat- 
aracts. Can that wild white water, foaming in rage, 
writhing in agony, beaten, baffled, moaning and lifting up 
its floods to God in despair, can that stream of life ever 
again be placid? Lo, here in front of the cottage it 
lapses softly over a mossy bed, and will flow on and on 
into the great sea on whose deeps the wildest storms have 
no effect, save only to make on its surface waves which 
to its vast soundings are less by far than were the ripples 
on the lake of youth. 



232 I GO A-FISHING. 

You get more fancies than facts in some clays' fishing, 
and thus it was with me. These are parts of the angler's 
life, and I wish every angler would make a book to de- 
scribe the rises of this sort that he gets, and the thoughts 
which come up to his thoughtless casting. 

The day was advanced before we reached Pollard's 
that afternoon. The valley of the East Branch lies south 
of Mount Lafayette, and heads up within two miles of the 
Crawford Notch. As you ascend it the hills separate, 
and I think there is nowhere in our northern Alps a more 
beautiful view than is spread out in every direction from 
Pollard's house, the last lonesome farm-house far up the 
valley. 

I have said that I went to make some inquiries, and 
these were soon answered to my dissatisfaction. There 
was once a wood-road, leading some miles up the East 
Branch, above the Pollard farm. It is now grown up so 
that one can not go on horseback more than two miles 
from the house. I abandoned the idea of going to the 
Willey Pond by this route, and we drove rapidly home- 
ward. 

The clouds which had been threatening us now and 
then during the day were driving black and furious down 
the Notch. They rested low on the hills, so that five 
hundred feet above us on each side the mountains were 
enveloped in mist which stretched across over head like 
a curtain, black, gloomy, rolling, tossing, folding and un- 
folding on the hill-sides, changing in a thousand ways, 
but never breaking its murky thickness. 

As we approached the Profile House it seemed like the 
twilight of a night about to close in with tempestuous 
darkness. No light in the forest, no light on the cloud 
curtain, no mountain-top pointing upward. All was de- 



THE CURTAIN OF GOLD. 233 

pressing, heavy, gloomy, and we felt like prisoners ; nay, 
I fancy we felt somewhat like the man in the iron room, 
who saw, year by year, the ceiling slowly but steadily de- 
scending to crush him. We scarcely spoke to one another 
as we drove homeward. 

And then, just as we reached the hotel, came a burst 
of splendor which I have no words to describe. Right 
up the gorge the clouds had suddenly vanished, as if by 
the word of the One who rideth on them. The horizon, 
the whole triangle formed by the sloping hill-sides and 
the line of the curtain over our heads, was clear as crystal, 
and the sun poured the glow of its last rays undimmed 
right down the valley, under the curtain which still over- 
hung us. In an instant the curtain, which had been so 
black and fierce, became a mass of waving gold. From 
hill to hill it flamed over us in indescribable splendor. 
The mists on the mountain-sides were transformed into 
all manner of gorgeous - colored and fantastic shapes. 
Now they flew down the ravine like hosts of frightened 
angels, turning and seeking shelter in every ravine, under 
every rocky ledge — then flying on again. Now they 
climbed the hills, swiftly crowding one. over another, as if 
they were visible spirits of light climbing the golden hills 
of heaven. Then the great curtain went rolling away 
and vanished in all its golden glory, as if gathered by in- 
visible hands swiftly up into heaven, revealing as it swept 
away, high up in their majesty, solemn, grand, and yet 
most holy in the radiance that now surrounded them, the 
cliffs of the Eagles standing in an azure sky. So after a 
life of storm and a death of hope stands the memory of 
the good man gone home. So, after all gloom and all 
doubt, and all varieties of thought and creed, stands the 
sublime faith in which our fathers have died. So after 



234 I GO A -FISHING. 

storms forever comes the calm ; so after gloom always 
comes the glory. 

When I reached my rooms I found John Steenburger 
and Doctor Johnston disputing, with unbecoming ferocity 
of voice and manner, the rendering of a passage in Per- 
sius; and when I came up after dinner they were still 
at it. 



XII. 

ON ECHO LAKE. 

" I'm going to bed," said the Doctor at length, and off 
he went, leaving John and myself alone. 

"This is like old times," said Steenburger as he drew 
his chair up before the fire. " I like this place. I used 
to think it the limit of all my travels to get as far off as 
this, and of all hopes of travel. I don't like it less, or any 
other place better even now." 

"One may go much farther and see nothing better 
worthy his eye-sight. My hand is lame to-night, John. 
Bring me that book, please ; that's a good fellow. I have 
worked hard to-day, what with driving and fishing." 

" I should think so. Where have you been ?" 

" Up the East Branch to Pollard's ; and what a drive 
home that was ! The last rays of the sun made the Eagle 
Cliff shine out in golden splendor beyond all words to 
speak of." 

"This valley reminds me sometimes of Chamouni. 
The lights of the afternoon sun are often the same." 

" Yes ; but nowhere in the world is there any thing to 
match the grandeur of that Profile. It is the American 
wonder of the world. Niagara is nothing to it. It grows 
on me from year to year. The unutterable calmness of 
that face high up in the clouds is more impressive than 
the loftiest mountain or the most thunderous cataract." 



236 I GO A -FISHING. 

" I remember years ago you startled me with an idea 
as we were floating on the lake one afternoon. We had 
. not spoken for a long time, when you suddenly said, 
'John, God made that face in the mountain before he 
had formed man in his own image.' I never wondered 
after that at the old story that the Indians worshiped the 
great stone face." 

"It is only a story. They never worshiped it. But 
the son of the forest was undoubtedly deeply impressed 
with the grandeur of that face. Its immutability in sun 
and storm could not but give to the red man, however 
thoughtless, the idea of immortality. He looked at it, 
and I do not think he could fail to catch the idea that 
the rocky face, stern, cold, and unimpressed with mind or 
thought, could not be equal in duration to the existence 
of man. The very clouds that drift over it, dashing their 
cold mists on the forehead of the mountain-man, taught 
him not to worship it. The winds that swept across it, 
with tempestuous laughter and moans, forbade him to 
think of it as other than a strange work of the Great Spirit, 
without soul, an emblem, a lesson. Nature spoke to him, 
and the face on the mountain had its voice, but com- 
manded only his respect for the mighty sculptor. Nature 
does not teach idolatry. That is one of the grandest les- 
sons of such scenery as this. The Chamouni Hymn, not 
Coleridge's, but the German — who was it? I forget — is 
very fine and tells the whole truth. The glacier, the Alp, 
the clouds, all alike speak of one ' to whom, wild Arvei- 
ron, rolls up the sound of thy terrible harmonies.' " 

"I have never seen such evening lights as we have 
here." 

"Nor I. The grandeur of evening in the Franconia 
Notch is beyond all words — nay, is beyond human ability 



ROSY MOUNTAINS. 237 

to appreciate. There are higher mountains, deeper ra- 
vines, more precipitous cliffs in the world, but nowhere in 
my wanderings have I found such lights as the departing 
sun leaves on the white hills of New Hampshire. Some- 
times in the Tyrol I have seen an approximation to this 
peculiarity, but only a distant approach. One I remem- 
ber in the valley of the Litany, when Hermon, snowy with 
his frozen dews, blushed in the evening over the departed 
glory of the once Holy Land ; and the blush changed at 
last into the purple tint that seemed as if it were a far-off 
feeling of the glory from the chariot wheels of the Lord. 
But the way of his journeying was remote, and the glory 
was but for an instant, and vanished, and a sudden black- 
ness, a cold cloud of gloom, covered the hill and fell into 
the valley from Jebel-es-Sheik, and the sound of the Lita- 
ny was like the sound of mourning. 

" The Alps boast of their rosy tints, and they are ex- 
ceedingly beautiful, sometimes very gorgeous, as who has 
not seen the Jungfrau from Interlaken, or Monte Rosa 
from the Cathedral of Milan. I have never seen the 
Rocky Mountains, but I have been told these same lights 
which characterize the White Hills are not uncommon on 
our western peaks. This I know, that no capacity for en- 
joyment is sufficient to appreciate the variety and change 
of the sunset and evening lights in the Franconia Notch 
— and though one has seen them a thousand times, he 
sees them each evening with new and sober delight, some- 
times rising into awe." 

" Do you know, Effendi, that the greatness of that Pro- 
file oppresses me. I have been drifting around Profile 
Lake all the afternoon and evening in your boat, and 
studying the face. It becomes a sort of fascination, and 
by no means a pleasant one. You have seen the Lord 



238 I GO A- FISHING. 

Chancellor in the pass of Glencoe, and a dozen other such 
freaks of nature, but there is nothing remotely to be com- 
pared with this. The expression of his countenance is 
often fearfully like life. I have been all this evening 
dwelling on a fancy that in the remote ages, before the 
first Osirtasen was king in Egypt, or the race of Ninus 
were on the thrones of Asia, there was here a nation born 
of the sons of Noah, who built a city and inhabited the 
mountain country; that in process of time they grew to 
be very great and powerful, and their fame went abroad 
through the continent; that the fate of nations, that des- 
tiny of which the history of the past is the solemn proph- 
et for all the future, overtook this unknown race ; that 
war, famine, and pestilence swept them away; that the 
convulsions of the earth hurled the mountains down on 
the ruins of their palaces, and after some mighty earth- 
quake that sent the great rocks from the very summits of 
the hills, filling the valleys, crushing the forests, hiding 
deep under rock and earth all traces of the old glories, 
yonder sad countenance was visible for the first time, and 
visible thenceforth forever, looking steadfastly downward 
to the grave of a forgotten race, a buried nation. 

" Even so that unutterably grand countenance of the 
Sphinx looks over the plain of the Nile, over the sandy 
hills of the Necropolis, over the heaps of earth and wav- 
ing groves of palm that cover and hide every vestige of 
the once great Memphis. But there is this difference, 
that the countenance of this Man of the Mountain is only 
stern and sad, like — very like the faces of the Assyrian 
kings on the Nineveh marbles, or that face of Rehoboam, 
the son of Solomon, on the temple wall at Karnak. There 
is expectation, but not hope in this countenance. The 
face of the Sphinx, with all its sadness, wears a smile. 



THE PROFILE. 239 

Sitting here to-night, I recall that face as you and I have 
seen it so often repeated on images throughout Egypt, 
always the same smiling countenance of majesty, unlike 
every other face in Egyptian sculpture. I can imagine 
to-night the starlight vanishing and the dawn breaking on 
that cold brow (for it is not yet midnight here, but the 
day is rising in Egypt), and I can see the smile with which 
the old image welcomes again, as so often, the calm clear 
dawn. That smile, the mystery of the Sphinx, I think we 
can understand. For in Egypt there shall be, and that 
before long, a new race and a new throne, and the tem- 
ples that for two thousand years have been waiting for 
worshipers shall be filled, and the dream of the old Egyp- 
tian, who built them for these later years as well as his 
own times, will be almost realized. There is hope in the 
smile of the Sphinx. But yonder old man of rock looks 
over hills from which a race has vanished never to re- 
turn. Not alone the race that I have imagined in the re- 
mote ages, but a later, a noble race, who will be forgotten 
like that other; who are already so forgotten that men 
can not name them in their own tongue, but speak of them 
as a people nameless and unknown. For them there is 
no hope ; and the old watcher for morning on the Fran- 
conia hills waits for no morning light on the people that 
have looked lovingly up to him for a thousand years. His 
face may well be sad forever." 

" Fancies, John, but more satisfying sometimes than re- 
alities. Nevertheless I think you wrong the old man's 
expression. You are correct in this that his countenance 
indicates expectation, and I think it has also some very 
little but far-off hope united with that look of waiting; 
and this half hopeful half despairing look of waiting is what 
gives him to my eye his chief grandeur. The things that 



240 I GO A-FISHING. 

have gone by are nothing. He looks to the rising sun, 
but stands immovable with back to his setting. He looks 
always since God made him — before he made man in sim- 
ilar image — he looks forever to the coming day, to the 
coming generations, to the coming ages, and as the even- 
ing purple covers the slopes of Lafayette, he seems to 
look over the hills for some long-delayed yet ever waited- 
for appearance. And I never understood that look till I 
came up here once in May before the snows were gone, 
and then it seemed to me in the red evening that there 
was a veritable glory and terror in the old man's face — 
and I will tell you why it might be so, and why the sunset 
light might well be awe-full. When the advancing spring 
melts the snow from the sides of Mount Lafayette, it al- 
ways leaves a wonderful sign on the western slope of the 
great hill, which you can not see from the Profile House or 
from the ravine, but which if you go out of the mountains 
toward Franconia you will see — or better still if you climb 
to the rocky forehead of the Old Man, you will see as his 
stony eyes have seen it in the alternation of the seasons 
since the hills were reared by the word of the Almighty. 
There every day in the spring a great white cross, a thou- 
sand feet in height, five hundred feet from arm to arm, 
stands on the mountain-side, caused by the snow which 
lies in deep masses in three ravines. And when the sun 
goes down, the Old Man sees the cross grow red and 
purple in the strange weird light, and high over it the 
summit of the hill gleams like a flaming star as the night 
hides the splendor of the ruby sign. And the old watcher, 
taking no note of the days and years and ages that have 
gone down in the West behind him, looks every spring to 
the sign of his coming who shall bring back with him all 
that was worthy in the departed cycles, and every summer 



FISHING IN HOLY LAND. 24I 

and winter keeps his eastward gaze unchanged toward 
that far-off" light that he once saw over the Mountain of 
the Ascension." 

"But here comes the Doctor again, just in time to in- 
terrupt our analysis of the Old Man's countenance. What 
now, Doctor ?" 

" What has become of that monster of a trout that was 
in the aquarium here for two or three years ?" 

" He died last fall, of old age I fancy. Wasn't he a 
beauty ?" 

" Where was he taken ?" 

" In Profile Lake. He weighed a little short of three 
pounds. The largest trout ever taken out of the lake. 
It was very odd. I was throwing a fly one evening, and 
had a dozen fine fish, when, just after dark, while I could 
scarcely see my fly on the water, I hooked a fine fish, and 
killed him in ten minutes. He was the largest fish that 
had been taken in the lake that year. He weighed a 
trifle over one pound and a half. Of course there was 
great excitement in the house in the evening, but the next 

morning imagine our astonishment when C took that 

noble fellow." 

"What a persevering chap you are at the fish," said 
John. " Do you remember the mill of E'ma-al-a-ha ?" 

" Never shall forget it. It has been a source of more 
serious consideration to my mind than any other spot of 
which at this moment I have any recollection. It bothers 
me. It perplexes me still. It keeps me awake o'nights." 

"What's that, John?" 

" When the Effendi and I were in Northern Palestine, 
it chanced that we pitched our tents one evening on the 
bank of a large spring, some hundred feet across, nearly 
round, deep, and clear as crystal. It poured out a strong 

Q 



242 I GO A- FISHING. 

stream which turned a rude wheel of the mill of E'ma-al- 
a-ha. The spring was alive with fish. He was a perse- 
vering angler then, as now. He had taken some fish in 
the Sea of Galilee, descendants of the sacred fish of an- 
cient times ; he had whipped the Jordan with all sorts of 
flies ; he had, in fact, fished all the waters of Israel ; and 
this spring, pouring its water into the Lake Merom, on 
the Upper Jordan, was certainly as fine-looking a place 
to fish as we had seen. We could see hundreds of large 
fellows sailing around in the clear water, but we took no 
fish there — not a fish, not the fin of a fish." 

John told the simple truth. 

It was more unintelligible to me than the hieroglyphics 
of Egypt were to Champollion. It bothered me more than 
a cuneiform inscription. They were large fish • they were 
plenty ; they were active. I had good tackle, enough of 
it. My old rod had done service in its day ; but it was 
of no use there. I tried every fly in the book. They did 
not even look at the cheats. I tried every bait imagin- 
able. They never approached it. I used all the insects 
and animals I could catch near the spring ; all the grubs 
and worms that live in the soil of the Jordan valley. I 
even tried raw meat and flour paste. I worked at the 
spring till long after dark, and began again at daylight in 
the morning : but it was of no use. Since then Dr. 
Thompson, of Sidon, the good and distinguished mission- 
ary, has told me that those fish are celebrated, and that 
no one has ever succeeded in taking one of them. But a 
few days' study and attention would do the work. It is 
only necessary to learn the habits of fish to be able to 
catch them. 

" Have you killed any trout- in Echo Lake this year ?" 
said the Doctor. 



ECHO LAKE. 243 

" Trout in Echo Lake !" exclaimed Steenburger. " I 
thought there were none there — only pickerel." fe 

" Ah ! that's a discovery since you were last here, John. 
I'll tell you about it." 

So I told the story of finding trout in Echo Lake. 

We had taken fewer trout than usual in Profile Lake 
during the summer of 1867, although the previous year 
had been one of great abundance. We estimated that 
more than three thousand trout had been taken out of 
the lake each season for several summers in succession, 
and there had hitherto been no visible diminution of the 
supply. But it now became hard work to cast and get 
nothing. During the whole season only one trout weighing 
a pound had been taken in Profile Lake, and a few hun- 
dred smaller fish. The mountain streams, however, were 
more fully stocked than usual with small fish, which are 
so delicious for the table. Dupont and myself had done 
hard yet pleasant work in whipping those wild brooks, 
seldom visited by man's footsteps, and we took often three 
and four hundred fish in a day. In fact, after a few days, 
we counted them only by the basketfuls. The Pemige- 
wasset seemed inexhaustible. We fished it in sections. 
Those who know the localities will understand me when 
I say that one day we fished the stream from the Basin to 
the Pool, through the wild ravine which plunges down be- 
low the Plymouth Road. Another day we fished from 
Walker's Cascade brook to the Basin. Yet another day 
from the old mill below the lake to the Walker's Cascade 
brook. Besides this we fished the Cascade brook (not 
Walker's) from source to mouth in sections. The result 
was generally about the same each day, and we brought 
home enormous quantities of small trout, with an occa- 
sional half or three-quarter pound fish. 



244 : GO A -FISHING. 

It had been for many years regarded as a settled fact 
that there were no trout in Echo Lake. Some one put 
pickerel in there years ago, and they have maintained 
possession. In 1859, a friend and myself devoted a day 
to taking fifty trout in Profile Lake and transferring them 
to Echo Lake, with the hope that a few of them might 
survive the attacks of the enemy, and eventually establish 
a colony there. But we never heard from them, and had 
never seen a trout rise on the surface of Echo Lake. 

One evening toward the close of the season I per- 
suaded Dupont and C to go with me to Echo Lake. 

"It's a great deal better to throw a fly where you know 
there are no trout, and so give patience a perfect trial," I 
said. And we went floating around the beautiful lake, 

C standing in the boat with my rod, and casting now 

and then inshore for a pickerel. Pickerel will take a fly 
with a rush, but they are not game after being struck. 
They come in like dead fish. It was a glorious afternoon, 
and we were enjoying the strong and various lights of the 
westering sun on the Eagle Cliffs and the slopes of Lafay- 
ette. There is in Echo Lake a certain spot where springs 
gush up from the bottom in about eight feet of water, sur- 
rounded by lily pads. We were gliding over this spot, 

when C handed me my rod, with which he had been 

casting, and said, " Take the rod while I look at this sun- 
set." I took the rod and carelessly threw over the spring- 
hole. As I drew across the still, black water, a sharp 
strike and a heavy plunge startled me from the seat where 
I had been holding the oars. A large fish went down 
with the line, and in an instant I found I must give him 
the reel. " The first pickerel I ever saw in Echo Lake to 
which I had to give the reel," I exclaimed as he rushed 
off. The next moment, as I checked him, and he swung 



ECHO LAKE. 245 

around on a long curve, he went into the air seventy-five 
feet off, and we shouted together, "It is a trout !" He was 
strong and lively. The reel sounded like a small watch- 
man's rattle. But he was engaged for the Profile House, 
and the only question was, " Can we secure him alive for 
the great tank ?" It took full ten minutes to tire him out, 
without attempting to kill him, and with much caution to 
do him as little injury as possible. We shouted to Frank 
at the boat-house to bring us another boat, and we filled 
it half full of water. By that time the trout was wearied 
out, and came tamely up to the side of the boat. We had 
no landing-net, for we had no thought of taking a large 
trout. So it was necessary to do that by no means easy 
thing, land him with the hand without hurting his gills. I 
did this at length, and the beautiful animal swam about 
the half-filled boat, not hurt, though sadly astonished. 
We sent up to the house for a tub, and in another half 
hour the old Profile Lake trout in the tank had a com- 
panion who weighed exactly three pounds and a quarter. 

In some other waters this would be esteemed of no 
great account ; but a three-pound trout at the Profile 
House, and that out of Echo Lake, was certainly a sub- 
ject of astonishment. This was on a Thursday evening, 

and the next morning, before I was awake, C was 

off for home by one of the early stages. 

The afternoon of Friday was clear but windy. There 
was more than a ripple — in fact a heavy sea — on Echo 
Lake. It was difficult to make an anchor hold. More 
than that, it was hard to rig an anchor, for they kept no 
ropes at Echo Lake. I cut a long birch pole, and with a 
short piece of cord fastened a large stone to one end, 
and made the other end fast to the oar-lock. With this I 
held on tolerably well ; and now, having a light rod, I 



246 I GO A -FISHING. 

was able to reach any point within a hundred feet to lee- 
ward with the tail fly. 

I pause a moment to describe the rod which I was 
using. 

The weight, length, and material which are best suited 
to a rod will depend wholly on the circumstances under 
which it is to be used. I find on counting that I am 
possessed of eleven rods, and I have used every one of 
them more or less. Dismissing all but such as are suited 
to trout-fishing, I find some which I use more than oth- 
ers. One is a strong rod, thirteen feet in length, weighing 
ten ounces without the reel. I use this rod for black 
bass and for trout when fish are large and plenty, and I 
desire to kill as many as possible within a limited time. 
A heavy rod properly handled will kill a large trout 
quicker than a light one, but carelessly handled is much 
more likely to lose the fish. The next two rods are fac- 
similes one of the other — a light seven-ounce rod, twelve 
feet long, made with the utmost care by an experienced 
fisherman, each joint thoroughly tried, and the whole rod 
subjected to every proper test before it was regarded as 
complete. The tip bends to the butt, and flies back to a 
straight line. With one of these light rods I have during 
five years' use killed many hundred pounds of fish in 
Europe, Asia, Africa, and America; and I would not part 
with either of them to-day for a hundred times its cost. 
They were made by Mr. Thaddeus Norris, of Philadel- 
phia, an accomplished angler, and author of one of the 
best fishing-books we have. These two rods are for all 
kinds of fly-fishing, on lake, river, or brook. I have one 
Norris rod lighter still for occasional use. 

The English fishermen do not, as a general rule, like 
our American light rods, and it is true that on their own 



FLY RODS. 247 

waters they kill more fish with their heavier tackle than 
an American working with them can kill with his light 
rod. But the converse is also true, that the American on 
our own waters with light tackle will kill more than the 
Englishman with heavy rod. I imagine the reason to be 
that the habits of the fish and their manner of taking the 
fly are different, and the Englishman in his own waters 
strikes his fish more securely with a heavy rod. Pos- 
sibly, practice on the water would bring the American's 
basket up to an equality. In my limited experience with 
trout in England I have found difficulty in striking suc- 
cessfully with my light rod, because, as it seemed to me, 
of the very gentle manner the fish had of rising to the fly. 
Yet at home there is no difficulty in striking the most 
delicate rise. 

But when once you have hooked your fish the light rod 
is vastly to be preferred, after becoming accustomed to 
handle it, whatever and wherever be the water. For the 
principle of the rod is in reality only this, that it is the 
home end of the line, stiffened and made springy, so that 
you can guide and manage it — cast and draw it, keep a 
gentle pressure with it on the hook so that the fish shall 
not rid himself of it, and finally lift him to the landing- 
net. Let the young angler always remember that his rod 
is only a part of the line. The control which a properly 
constructed rod gives to the angler over his line and over 
a large fish on it is wonderful. For ordinary lake-fish- 
ing, American anglers are accustomed to cast from thirty 
to sixty feet of line from the end of the rod. I have seen 
an angler, under favorable circumstances, cast from a sev- 
en-ounce Norris rod a straight cast of ninety-four feet 
from the end of the rod, or, including the rod, a hundred 
and five feet of line from the hand, and repeat the cast 



248 I GO A -FISHING. 

again and again without varying the drop of the tail fly 
more than three feet. This is a tremendous cast, and 
few will be able to get out much over seventy feet. 

Another of my rods is twelve feet long, and weighs 
nine ounces, the additional weight being chiefly in the 
second joint and tip. This makes a stiffer rod, and suit- 
able for river and brook fishing, where the cover forbids 
long casting, and where a short line is often to be guided 
on running water among overhanging bushes. 

The weight of the line will always depend on the weight 
of the rod. I prefer the ordinary braided-silk line to any 
other. The prepared lines are not objectionable until 
they are worn, when they give trouble. But all anglers 
have their fancies, as I mine, and the best rule for every 
one is to use the rod and line which best suits him. He 
is an ill-judging angler who allows himself to be made 
uncomfortable for the sake of following the notions of 
dilettant anglers. I have seen many times the nonsense 
of following rules. One evening, when the sun was going 
down on Follansbee Pond in a tempest, and large trout 
were rising as fast as I could throw two scarlet ibis flies, 
a strong fellow struck the bobber and carried away the 
leader, and I had not a red fly left in my book. I made 
up another leader with dark and light flies, but nothing 
rose. Then I saw that my old guide Steve Turner had 
on a red flannel shirt, and I shouted to him, for he was 
in another boat, for a piece of it. He whipped out his 
knife and cut off a piece and brought it to me ; and with 
a rag of red flannel on each fly I took large trout at ev- 
ery cast, till the deep darkness and heavy rain drove me 
ashore. That was more than fifteen years ago, and 
Steve's red shirt has served my turn many a day since, 
and a fragment of it lies in an old fly-book to this day. 



ECHO LAKE. 249 

I have often used a white rag in the evening instead of a 
white moth. Better still sometimes I have found a strip 
of the white skin from a shiner's belly. 

And now by your leave we will return to Echo Lake, 
where I stood with a light Norris rod in hand and two 
flies on my leader. The wind was heavy, and the waves 
swashed among the lily pads. A half-hour's casting 
brought nothing to the surface. It was nearly dark. No 
fly seemed worth any thing. Black, brown, red, gray, 
coachman, dun, cinnamon, and even the white moth, so 
successful at evening on Profile Lake, all failed. Could 
it be that I had taken the solitary trout of Echo Lake, last 
of his race ? At length I selected a large fly, with a bril- 
liant scarlet body and two stiff white wings of the ptarmi- 
gan feather. One long cast, and as this strange fly, un- 
like any thing on earth or water, sprang from one wave- 
top to another, there was a sharp rush, up into the air 
went a noble fish, and turning over struck down on the 
fly, and the whirr of the reel made its music in an instant. 
He was fast and away. A shout warned Frank to come 
out with his boat, and in a few moments a gentleman who 
was also near me, and had been casting over the same 
spot a few moments before, pulled toward me and lay off 
to see the contest. Small as a trout is, this contest be- 
tween him and a man is by no means unequal ; and with 
a strong, lively fish, the chances are against the human 
in such a case as this. For the wind was heavy and the 
lily stems were strong and abundant. The fish made a 
rush for the deep water, which sounds twenty-seven feet 
outside the lily pads. He had struck on fifty feet of line, 
and had more than eighty feet out when the lily stems 
brought him up and made it strongly probable that he 
would break away from the tackle. For let the uniniti- 



250 I GO A-FISHING. 

ated be informed that in trout-fishing very light tackle is 
used, and if a strong fish secures a chance for a steady 
pull or jerk against a firm resistance, he will probably 
break away. The one great law of all fishing with a fly- 
rod is this : (£' Never point the rod toward the fish, but 
keep it always up, so that he pulls on the spring of the 
rod." Therein lies the grand merit of the Norris rod. Its 
spring is steady, even, long, and easy. After a few mo- 
ments the fish drew the line through the lily stems and 
went away for deep water. As the darkness settled down 
the wind fell. This fish was one of the strongest trout I 
had ever landed. Although he weighed only a trifle over 
two pounds, he worked as bravely as any five-pound fish 
that I ever saw. Five, six, seven times he went out of 
water on the swing of the line. Trout never, in my ex- 
perience, throw themselves out of water. Black bass do 
it deliberately and ferociously. But trout seek usually to 
go down. When they are straining on the line and swim- 
ming in the arc of a circle, if they happen to start on a 
rush with the head up, or only parallel to the top of the 
water, the chances are that the spring of the rod will cant 
the head of the fish toward the surface, and out he goes 
in spite of himself. It sometimes happens, as in this case, 
that a strong fish, to whom you have given the butt (that 
is, the utmost force of spring which the rod has, including 
the butt as well as the rest of the rod), will thus go out of 
water several times before he is conquered. I wanted 
this fish alive, but it was growing dark and I was in a 
hurry. It was full ten minutes before I had him along- 
side for the first time. He was apparently overcome. The 
beautiful rod was bending in a graceful curve, almost a 
circle, when down he dashed, strong as ever, the tip of 
the rod brushing the fingers that held the butt, and again 



ECHO LAKE. 25 I 

he was off with fifty feet of line. It was his last flurry, 
and now he came alongside and lay quiet, sinking into 
the net as it glided under him and lifted him gently 
into Frank's boat, which was ready for him. He was 
soon in the great tank in the house, and the three fish 
were worth looking at. This was on Friday evening. 
Saturday was stormy and wild. Sunday was one of those 
days of indescribable beauty which make the Profile 
House to seem sometimes in the land of Beulah. Mon- 
day was the last day of my stay that season at the Profile 
House, for we were to go northward in New Hampshire 
to fish the waters west and east of Dixville Notch, and 
had planned to leave on Tuesday morning for the ren- 
dezvous at Littleton. It seemed hardly worth while to 
expect any more such sport on Echo Lake, but as I rowed 
around the lake in the morning in a clear soft sunshine, 
and resting on the oars passed gently over the spring- 
hole, I looked down, and in six feet of water saw one soli- 
tary trout, apparently looking around for his lost com- 
panions. So toward sunset Dupont and myself went 
down, and after casting for an hour with all kinds of flies, 
but raising nothing, I put on the same queer fly with the 
scarlet body and white wings, and at the first cast up 
came the last of his race, so far as I knew, in Echo Lake, 
and I landed him after ten minutes of sharp struggling. 
He weighed a short two pounds. The same care was 
taken with him, and he reached the tank in the Profile 
House in fine condition. Four more beautiful trout were 
never seen together in a glass aquarium than these which 
attracted the admiration of the crowd of visitors at the 
Profile at the close of the season. 

This ended the summer's fishing in the Franconia 
Notch, and the next day we started for the north. 



252 I GO A-FISHING. 

When I reached the Profile House the next year, I was 
curious to know whether there were any more of the same 
sort offish in Echo Lake, and went there several evenings 
in succession, but got nothing. I never knew another 
trout to rise on Echo Lake in the evening. But one 
morning, bright and sunshiny, between eleven and one 
o'clock, I saw trout rising near the spring-hole among 
the lily pads, and taking the hint I sent for my rod, and 
killed that day seven fish weighing severally from one 
pound and three quarters to two and three quarters. The 
next day, at the same hour and with the same bright sun- 
shine, I killed one weighing over three pounds and two 
that weighed nearly two pounds each. Since that time I 
have killed in Echo Lake over thirty fish, none of which 
weighed less than a pound. But there are no small fish 
in the lake, and pickerel abound, so that no increase of 
trout can be hoped for. The lake has now been ju- 
diciously stocked with black bass, and after a few years 
we hope they will enjoy undisputed possession. 



It 



XIII. 

THREE BOTTLES OF CLARET. 

It had been a delicious afternoon on Profile Lake ; one 
of those days when the very glory of the other country 
seems to come down among our mountains. The little 
lake had presented, as usual on such evenings, a gay and 
brilliant scene. It was a lake of Paradise. A dozen boats 
were out with parties of ladies or with anglers, some of 
the latter fishing with floats and worms, some casting flies, 
and now and then getting up fair trout. I had passed 
the time after a fashion that is somewhat lazy and luxu- 
rious, lying at full length in the bottom of my boat, drift- 
ing idly around while I read an old book, occasionally 
sinking into a doze and dreaming. As evening came 
down the various parties left the lake, and at last in the 
twilight Dupont came up in his boat alongside of mine, 
and we found ourselves, as often before, alone on the 
lake. 

Among all my memories of trout-fishing there are none 
more pleasant than the memories of those evenings on 
Profile Lake, when my friend and I, with our boats at 
anchor a few rods apart, have cast our flies long after the 
darkness prevented our seeing their fall, and whether we 
got rises or not were content to see the stars come over 
the mountains, or the moonlight descend into the ravine 
and silver the surface of the lake. 



¥ 



254 l G0 A-FISHING. 

This evening was profoundly still ; not a breath of air 
disturbed the leaf of a tree. One could hardly hope to 
find a Profile Lake trout so foolish as to take a fly on 
such a glassy surface. I was lazy and indolent, but Du- 
pont was making long and steady casts, always graceful, 
and as sure as graceful. I paused and watched him. I 
could just see in the twilight the fall of his tail fly, some 
fifty feet away from his hand, as it touched the water 
close inshore under a great rock, and I felt in my own 
arm the thrill which was in his as I saw the slightest com- 
motion on the surface, and knew that a good fish had risen 
and "sucked in" the fly without striking it. It was a 
very pretty contest then, with his light Norris rod and a 
fish that would weigh over a pound. The silence was 
profound. No sound on water or land or in the air. Few 
night birds are heard in our forests thereabouts, and in 
the cool evenings the insects are still. So I looked on 
while he patiently wearied and landed his fish — a good 
size for this over-fished lake, where the trout have little 
chance to grow large. It is in some respects the most 
wonderful trout pond I have ever known. In the rush 
of travel hundreds of men and boys, and many ladies, take 
trout here every summer. Few days in July and August 
see less than ten or fifteen rods on the lake. We have 
estimated an annual catch of at least three thousand trout 
in this small pond, and the supply seems equally great 
each year. This is largely due to the protection of the 
smaller pond above the lake, which is the breeding-place, 
and where no fishing is permitted. 

I had taken nothing. In fact, I had not made a dozen 
casts. But now I began to work, laying the flies away in 
the shoal water near the inlet. It is the advantage of 
fly-fishing that one can cover so large a space of water 



BEFORE DAYLIGHT. 255 

without moving position. It is an easy matter in still 
weather to whip every inch of a circle of a hundred and 
fifty feet diameter. 

The fisherman who tries the water of a new lake, un- 
certain whether there be any trout in it, should, if possible, 
cast at evening near an inlet. He will often find the 
largest trout in water not over six inches deep. It is 
probable that at this hour of the day the large trout are 
on the feed, and seek near the inlet the smaller fish as 
well as insects. I remember an evening in Northern New 
Hampshire, when Dupont and myself took twenty-seven 
trout between sunset and an hour after dark, every one 
of which weighed over two pounds, and every one took 
the fly in water about ten inches deep. There was a 
brilliant full moon that night, and they rose later than 
usual. An old Adirondack guide has frequently told me 
that in those waters large trout rise freely to the fly be- 
tween one and three o'clock in the morning. I have 
never been able to verify his saying, for I have never loved 
fishing well enough to toil all night at it as did the apos- 
tles, nor to get out of bed very long before day. I have, 
however, not infrequently cast for a half-hour before the 
dawn on water where trout were abundant, and I never 
got a rise until day was fairly shining. But I am not 
willing to place my limited experience against the asser- 
tion of the guide, backed as it was by the statement of 
sportsmen that they had known him to go out of camp at 
midnight and return before daylight with a load of trout. 
In some of the streams of the Pacific coast I have been 
told trout are taken with bait at all hours of the night in 
streams where one is seldom taken in daylight. All this 
goes to the question whether fish sleep, a question not yet 
satisfactorily answered. 



256 I GO A-FISHING. 

I could not provoke a rise, and it grew dark apace. I 
threw my line back for a long cast. It was very near be- 
ing a case of broken rod, for there was a sharp jerk as 
the flies went through the air, the line came in all in a 
heap, and something fell into the water close to the boat. 
I picked up the slack and hauled in — a bat. The wretch 
had taken a small black gnat, and the hook was in his 
throat. So much for casting a fly in the dark. It was 
the last cast I made that evening. We went ashore and 
strolled up the dark road to the hotel. 

The windows blazed their light into the gloom of the 
Notch, making a strange contrast to the darkness of the 
forest road from which we emerged. The sound of the 
music in the drawing-room drove all forest ideas out of 
one's head. It was nine o'clock, and the dancing had 
begun. The Profile House is a small world in the midst 
of the mountain solitudes. Including guests and persons 
employed about the house, there were nearly eight hun- 
dred men, women, and children there that night, and 
every station in life was represented. 

Have I any where in these sketches mentioned my old 
friend, Major Wilson ? He was sometimes one of our 
group at the Rookery in years past, but since he had 
grown to full age he seldom ventured far from his own 
dinner-table. Why should he, since he esteemed it the 
main luxury of life ? Do not imagine him a useless man, 
a mere bon-vivant. He was a hearty old man, a patron 
of art, and very generous withal. A man is none the 
worse for loving a good dinner. Gastronomy is as much 
one of the fine arts as trout-fishing or sculpture. It is 
very depraved taste which despises good cookery. Table 
decoration, furniture, and provision form almost the only 
safe standard by which to estimate national or individual 



CIVILIZATION. 257 

civilization; for civilization is not, as some people imag- 
ine, a question of morals or religion. Christianity is not 
synonymous with civilization ; neither does its introduc- 
tion civilize a nation. It deals with the individual man, not 
with communities. Men call New York a Christian city, 
England a Christian country, the people of the United 
States a Christian people. This is pure nonsense. There 
are not more than one in ten, perhaps not more than one 
in a hundred, of the people who are in any proper sense 
Christians ; whose morals, manners, or characters have 
been directly touched by the refining influences of person- 
al Christianity. Obviously the influence and example of 
the Christian has its effect on his companions, but that 
is no reason for calling a people Christian who have only 
a small sprinkling of Christians among them. Nor can 
we stand a comparison with some heathen nations. Chris- 
tianity can not afford to be saddled with the absurd and 
barbarous customs of our social life, or with the manners 
and customs of so-called Christian peoples, especially 
when it appears that the civilization of Japan is in many 
respects in advance of that of England or America. We 
have innumerable habits and manners which are barba- 
rous. The dress of a gentleman or of a lady in New 
York in this year 1873 * s barbarous, whether regarded by 
standards of taste, comfort, or usefulness. A dress-coat 
was no more absurd a costume on the West Coast African, 
who wore nothing else, than it is on the diner-out of New 
York. A stove-pipe hat is so thoroughly ridiculous that 
no barbarous nation has ever invented any thing remote- 
ly resembling it. 

Seek a standard where you will, and, after all, it will be 
found that the manner and matter of feeding is a tolera- 
bly safe one by which to measure comparative civilization. 

R 



258 I GO A-FISHING. 

The Major had been a week or two at the Profile 
House, living at his ease, and rather content with the 
table, which was not by any means a poor one, and sol- 
aced for any minor failures by his own wine. He did not 
wander much among the mountains, but contented him- 
self, book in hand, with the sunshine on the broad piazza, 
and evenings in his own rooms, where his man John, who 
had been his personal servant more than thirty years, 
took care to make him comfortable. His rooms were 
near mine, and that evening after Dupont and myself had 
dined — for I make it dinner however late the coming 
home occurs — I went to see the Major. 

One can be very comfortable in a summer hotel if he 
will take a little trouble and go to a little expense.- One 
can not be comfortable at any summer hotel in America 
or the world without these. The rooms of my friend were 
two ordinary bed-rooms, one of which he used as a salon ; 
and by a very little exertion it had been made into a cozy 
and rather brilliant room. The table was literally covered 
with books and periodicals, for the Major had a hunger 
for reading which could never be satisfied, and every 
mail brought him packages. He was tearing off the 
envelope from an Innspruck book-catalogue as I en- 
tered the room, and I recognized the label of an old ac- 
quaintance. 

" So you get catalogues from Carl Pfaundler, do you ? 
I have picked up some good things in his shop." 

"Yes. I have a pretty extensive list of booksellers 
sending me their catalogues, but it's getting to be rather a 
nuisance. I've about done with buying old books. Come 
in; find a chair — John, a chair — help yourself to the Claret. 
You dined late I fancy. Did you get me a good trout for 
breakfast?" 



AMERICAN MARKETS. 259 

"Not a trout. I took a bat on the wing. Did you 
ever eat bat ?" 

" Never. I suppose it would be about the same thing 
as mice. Mice are not good ; the flavor is musky. Rats 
are much better, and very decent eating, if they are prop- 
erly fed. I don't know why bats might not be made eat- 
able. They are carnivorous ; but dogs are good food, if 
well cooked. However, we don't need to try experiments 
in this land, where the markets are better than in any 
other country on earth." 

" I'm glad to hear you say that, Major. I have said 
it often, and it's pleasant to be backed by a man of your 
gastronomic taste." 

"Who disputes it? Surely no one who knows any 
thing about eating. There are articles, of course, which 
are to be found in other countries superior to the same 
article here ; but America is the only land for general 
good eating. One gets fearfully tired of a European 
kitchen, even with all the resources of Paris in the palmi- 
est days of The Brothers. But here the varieties of fish 
and flesh are inexhaustible ; and fruit — nowhere in the 
world is there a fruit market comparable with that of 
New York. An English sole is not equal in flavor to a 
flounder taken in clear water at Stonington, and a turbot 
is no better than a tautog. Shad, sheepshead, Spanish 
mackerel, red snappers, bass, blue-fish — a fresh blue-fish 
is glorious — where will you stop in the list of fish that 
abound on our coast, every one of which is better than 
any salt-water fish known on the other side of the At- 
lantic ?" 

" Excepting sardines." 

"Well, I may perhaps except sardines." 

"May? None of your prejudices, old fellow. There's 



260 I GO A-FISHING. 

no dish of fish to be invented equal to sardines, fried and 
served as they used to do it in the old San Marco at 
Leghorn. I lament the closing of that house with pro- 
found regret. I have gone down from Florence more 
than once to pass a night there just for the sake of the 
delicious breakfast I used to get on those sardines. No 
one else cooked or served them so in any town on the 
French or Italian coast." 

" I remember fifty years ago seeing them catch sardines 
along the shore at Naples." 

" Yes, I have sat many a morning in the window at the 
old Vittoria, looking out on the sea and watching the sar- 
dine nets come in, glittering with diamonds ; and I have 
taken them with a rod at Leghorn." 

" I never found trout south of the Alps. Why is that ?" 

"Simply because you never looked for them yourself. 
The hotels rarely furnish them ; but you can get them in 
Lombardy if you want them. I have taken trout in the 
Izak above Trent, and at Botzen." 

" My dear boy, what a muddle your brain must be in 
about historic places. The idea of talking about trout- 
fishing at Trent, a place with which one never associated 
any idea but of profound ecclesiastical and theological 
significance." 

"There's a charm in trout-fishing, Major, which you 
would have appreciated if your education had not been 
neglected. It has never failed me; and I have studied 
no small amount of history as I strolled along the bank 
of a trout stream. Were you ever at Salzburg ?" 

"Three several times, and always fared well at the 
Hotel de l'Europe." 

" Ah yes, you think first of the hotel. So do many old 
travelers. So I confess do I sometimes- A poor inn is 



TROUT IN THE TYROL. 26 1 

a fearful obstacle to the enjoyment of art or antiquity. 
But there are trout streams around Salzburg, and some 
fine trout in them ; and I have passed some of the pleas- 
antest days along those streams, looking up at the grand 
pile of the Untersberg, in whose caverns the two emperors 
sit face to face, sleeping, but now nearly ready to wake. I 
was fishing there in June, 187 1, and wondering what could 
happen to rouse the mighty Charles, and a month later 
the thunders of Weissembourg must have shaken the im- 
perial slumbers. But Ischl, Major, Ischl — were you ever 
at Ischl ? It is the most lovely spot in Europe. Go there 
before you die, and don't go to the Hotel Bauer on the 
hill, but to Sarsteiner's, The Kreutz, a capital inn, with 
old books in the halls, and pictures of all sorts of places, 
and large bed-rooms and saloons, and a kitchen that is 
not to be surpassed in or out of the Tyrol. It will suit 
you. The valley of the Traun is a glorious place, and 
the river is the only river my eyes ever saw which is in- 
disputably superior in beauty of water to our White Mount- 
ain streams. The delicate apple-green tint does not harm 
its transparency. You can see bottom in twenty feet of 
water. It flows like a liquid chrysoprase, and the trout 
and grayling in it are superb. Mr. Sarsteiner controls 
all the fishing in the valley, and is himself an angler, a 
man of reading and extensive travel, and is interested in 
fish-breeding. The fishing is close at hand too. I went 
out of the house one evening about seven o'clock, and 
walked in five minutes to the other side of the Traun, just 
above the bridge and opposite the promenade, where the 
river glides swiftly down over a pebble bottom. It was 
nearly dark, but in fifteen minutes I had a half-dozen good 
trout which the boy stowed safely in a barrel; for in 
Switzerland and the Tyrol, when you go a-fishing, you 



262 I GO A- FISHING. 

have always with you a boy who carries a small barrel in 
which it is his duty to keep the fish alive until they are 
transferred to the tank which every inn keeps stocked 
with plenty of trout. It had gotten to be quite dark, and 
I was casting a large white moth across the swift current, 
when I got the heaviest strike, with one exception, that I 
ever felt from a trout in Europe. He made a splendid 
struggle; but the little Norris rod did its duty, and I 
brought him to barrel in a few minutes — that is to say, I 
landed and unhooked him, and handed him to the boy 
while I hurried to cast again. I had made only one cast 
when the boy shouted, ' He's too big for the barrel ;' and 
I turned to laugh at his vain endeavors to crowd his tail 
into the hole. He was, in fact, two inches longer than 
the barrel, which had not been made in expectation of 
such fish. So I slipped him into his short quarters, and 
gave up the sport, and in five minutes he was the admira- 
tion of a crowd in the kitchen of the Golden Cross, swim- 
ming around in a small tank into which cold spring water 
poured a steady stream. He weighed only two and three 
quarter pounds English ; but Mr. Sarsteiner told me that, 
though he had seen larger trout there, he was one of the 
largest, if not the largest, that he had ever known taken 
with a fly in the Tyrol. All the way up the river to Lake 
Haldstadt there are plenty of fine trout, and I have en- 
joyed many a day's sport along the beautiful stream." 

"Now for the exception." 

"What exception?" 

" You said it was the heaviest strike, with one excep- 
tion, that you ever felt in Europe." 

" I'm a little ashamed of that other. You remember 
the Rhine above the falls, from Schaffhausen to the Cha- 
teau Laufen ? I was fishing it one evening, years ago, in 



TROUT IN THE RHINE. 263 

a boat, with a strong German boy to row. I had to keep 
a sharp look-out, for the current is wild, and it is not quite 
sure that, if you are careless, you may not go over the falls. 
By-the-by, Major, with all our boasting, we haven't many 
cataracts in America as fine as the Rhine Falls. It's a 
grand piece of scenery. It looks better from below than 
above, however, if you happen to be in a heavy boat with 
a stupid boy as oarsman. We were just on the edge of 
the swift water, and I told him to hold on by the bushes 
and keep the craft steady while I cast. He obeyed, until 
a tremendous swirl and swash startled him as a trout 
struck the fly. The rush was so sudden that the boy was 
absolutely scared, so that he let go the bushes, and the 
boat swept right across the line at the same instant that 
the trout went down. My second joint broke close to 
the butt ferrule, and we went like lightning toward the 
falls. I dropped my rod to seize an oar, and threw my 
whole weight on it. The boat yielded, took the cant I 
intended, and plunged bow on into the bank, where I 
seized the bushes and held on till the young Teuton came 
to his senses. Meantime the second joint and tip had 
gone overboard, and the reel was paying out. I brought 
in line very gently, and grasping the lower end of the sec- 
ond joint, dropped the butt, and proceeded to try an old 
and difficult plan of using the hand instead of a reel. As 
soon as I got in slack enough I felt the fish. He was at 
the bottom, and made a rush when he felt the first steady 
pressure of the tip. It took me twenty minutes, with sec- 
ond joint and tip, to kill that trout, well on to four pounds' 
weight, and the largest I ever killed east of the Atlantic. 
That same evening I took twenty more trout, and no one 
of them went over four ounces." 

"I am one of the few," said the Major, sipping his 



264 I GO A -FISHING. 

claret appreciatively, and then tossing the full glass down 
his capacious throat, as if to wash a way out for talk — 
" I am one of the few who once loved angling, but have 
lost their taste for it. I've been latterly thinking the 
matter over, and — can you justify yourself in it ? Isn't it 
cruelty to animals? You know these are days in which 
men are getting to have notions on that subject." 

" I've no objection to their notions, and I have the 
highest opinion of the society for the prevention of cruel- 
ty to animals; but we must guard our sympathies that 
they do not go too far. No man of decency will be guilty 
of wanton cruelty to a beast. I have a warm love for 
some beasts. My dogs, my horses, have I not loved 
them? But there is much nonsense afloat on the sub- 
ject. I rate the life of a beast somewhat lower than that 
of a man, and his comfort in the same ratio. I must often 
work even when I am sick. Rheumatism bothers me, 
and I have frequently to walk and even run when I am 
lame. Yes, perhaps it is gout. We won't discuss that; 
but lame or not I must work. Business requires it. I 
would drive a lame horse for the same reason. A poor 
carman can not afford to let his horse rest, any more 
than he can afford to rest himself, on account of a slight 
ailment. It's an error therefore to suppose it always 
wrong to get work out of a suffering animal. So, too, I 
would kill a horse to accomplish a result which I valued 
at a higher rate than the life of the horse, if I could not 
accomplish it in any other way. Some philanthropists, 
good men, but thoughtless, who would never dream of 
blaming a man for earning his bread and that of his chil- 
dren when he was sick and suffering, but would rather 
commend him, would fine and imprison him for working 
his sick horse with the same necessity impelling him. 



CRUELTY TO BEASTS. ' 265 

"They should try to make a reasonable distinction in 
these matters between wanton cruelty and the necessary 
work that we must get out of a sick animal. I never saw 
a nobler beast, or one to which I was more thoroughly 
attached than my bay horse Mohammed; but great as 
he was and much as I loved him, do you not believe I 
would have ridden him through fire and tempest till he 
fell down dead, if it were necessary to save his mistress, 
who loved him as well as I, a pain or a sorrow ? Should 
I let her suffer to save a horse from suffering? Does 
your notion of charity extend so far as that ? mine does 
not. I might give myself pain to save him pain; but 
her ? — Never. Mohammed would have said so too if he 
could have spoken. I know he would. 

" In war this whole subject is understood well, and no 
one thinks of finding fault with the destruction of the 
lives of beasts to accomplish the purposes of men ; for in 
war human life is freely expended to purchase results. 
Who would blame an officer for using his lame, sick, dy- 
ing mules and horses to the last moment to accomplish 
an object in the face of the enemy ? It is then a mere 
question with beasts and with men, how much must be 
sacrificed to do the work. Would you require them to 
let sick mules rest in hospital, if they had no others?" 

" Then you don't approve of stopping cars and omni- 
busses in New York, and compelling the passengers to 
dismount and find other conveyances, because the horses 
are lame ?" 

" Not at all. It is well meant, but it is bad in princi- 
ple, and injures the society which does it. It would be 
right and proper to take a note of the horses and their 
owners and drivers, and make the necessary complaint in 
the police court, and if the animals were treated with 



266 I GO A -FISHING. 

wanton cruelty punish the guilty. But the time of a pas- 
senger is often worth thousands of dollars per minute, 
and the probability of such value outweighs all consider- 
ations of comfort to horses. In the days of the horse 
disease, when all the cities were suffering, it was both 
necessary and proper to use sick horses for transporta- 
tion. It was a pure question of money value then. Shall 
a merchant allow ten thousand dollars' worth of perish- 
able goods to decay for the sake of saving the health or 
the comfort of a cart-horse ? Yet the absurd proposition 
was forced on the public that it was their duty to sacri- 
fice their own comfort, property, and health to the com- 
fort of the horses. Nonsense. If you had a sick child, 
would you hesitate to kill a horse if necessary to get a 
surgeon or a physician in time to save the child's life? 
If you had a loaded wagon full of perishable articles of 
great value, would you hesitate to use your lame horses, 
or kill them if necessary to save your property ? Let us 
teach kindness to animals, men and beasts, and make it 
infamous to treat them with unnecessary or wanton cru- 
elty ; but don't let us get our ideas mixed up on the sub- 
ject, so that we place the comfort of the beasts above 
that of the men. For all our purposes the comfort and 
the life of a beast have a measurable value. The owner 
is the judge of that value to him." 

" But how about killing fish for sport ?" 

" In the name of sense, man, if God made fish to be 
eaten, what difference does it make if I enjoy the killing 
of them before I eat them ? You would have none but 
a fisherman by trade do it, and then you would have him 
utter a sigh, a prayer, and a pious ejaculation at each 
cod or haddock that he killed; and if by chance the old 
fellow, sitting in the boat at his work, should for a mo- 



MORALITY OF ANGLING. 267 

ment think there was, after all, a little fun and a little 
pleasure in his business, you would have him take a 
round turn with his line, and drop on his knees to ask 
forgiveness for the sin of thinking there was sport in 
fishing. 

"I can imagine the sad-faced, melancholy-eyed man, 
who makes it his business to supply game for the market 
as you would have him, sober as the sexton in Hamlet, 
and forever moralizing over the gloomy necessity that 
has doomed him to a life of murder ! Why, sir, he would 
frighten respectable fish, and the market would soon be 
destitute. 

"The keenest day's sport in my journal of a great 
many years of sport was when, in company with some 
other gentlemen, I took three hundred blue-fish in three 
hours' fishing off Block Island, and those fish were eaten 
the same night or the next morning in Stonington, and 
supplied from fifty to a hundred different tables, as we 
threw them up on the dock for any one to help himself. 
I am unable to perceive that I committed any sin in tak- 
ing them, or any sin in the excitement and pleasure of 
taking them. 

" It is time moralists had done with this mistaken mo- 
rality. If you eschew animal food entirely, then you may 
argue against killing animals, and I will not argue with 
you. But the logic of this business is simply this: The 
Creator made fish and flesh for the food of man, and as 
we can't eat them alive, or if we do we can't digest them 
alive, the result is we must kill them first, and (see the 
old rule for cooking a dolphin) it is sometimes a further 
necessity, since they won't come to be killed when we 
call them, that we must first catch them. Show first, then, 
that it is a painful necessity — a necessity to be avoided 



268 I GO A -FISHING. 

if possible — which a good man must shrink from and ab- 
hor, unless starved into it, to take fish or birds, and which 
he must do when he does it with regret, and with sobri- 
ety and seriousness, as he would whip his child, or shave 
himself when his beard is three days old, and you have 
your case. But till you show this, I will continue to think 
it great sport to supply my market with fish. 

" Between ourselves, Major, I am of opinion that Peter 
himself chuckled a little when he took an extra large 
specimen of the Galilee carp, and I have no doubt that 
he and James, and even the gentle and beloved John, 
pulled with a will on the miraculous draught of fishes." 

" Probably you are right ; but I have lost my love for 
the sport. I can hardly say how it came about with me. 
I think it was the result of a long illness which I had in 
my middle life, and from which I recovered slowly, and 
in such strict confinement that the love of reading grew 
on me, and other employments lost the zest which I once 
found in them. I sometimes wonder now how you can 
read all winter and go a-fishing all summer as you do. 
I can't separate myself from my books." 

"You are growing quite too bookish of late years, if 
you will pardon me for saying so, my old friend." 

" As how ?" 

" I mean that you are getting to be dreamy in your 
manner, and you don't seem to realize the common events 
of life. You live so much among thoughts and imagina- 
tions that you're getting to be quite useless as a com- 
panion, except when one wants to talk or listen." 

" I haven't lost my appreciation of claret." 

"So I perceive." 

" Your glass is empty. Help yourself." 

" Thanks ; I'm doing very well." 



LITERATURE OF ANGLING. 



269 



" Talking of books and fishing, Effendi, did you ever 
come across the ' Dyalogus Creaturarum ?' " 

" Yes, I have the Gouda edition of Leeu, 1482 I believe 
is the date." 

" There's a comical little picture of a fisherman in it, 
illustrating a fabled talk between two fish. I don't know 
whether there is any older picture of the gentle art in ex- 
istence, but that is worth noting as a historical illustration, 
for the angler there uses a float."* 

" The literature of angling is abundant, and art has al- 
ways found ample range in its illustration. I have seen 
a score of pictures of fishing on ancient Egyptian monu- 
ments. Many modern artists are enthusiastic anglers. 
And in what kind of life could they find more of the beau- 
tiful ? Look at a trout. Is there any object more exqui- 
sitely beautiful ?" 

" Yes, a small rattlesnake." 

" Gaudy, Major, and brilliant, but the brilliancy of the 

* I have thought the Major's suggestion so good that I here repro- 
duce the illustration, in fac-simile, from the "Dyalogus Creaturarum." 
Gouda, Gerard Leeu, 1482. 




270 I GO A -FISHING. 

diamond and ruby compared with the soft glow of the 
pearl. Do you know these little Pemigewasset trout are 
so exquisite in their pearl and rose colors that I didn't 
wonder the other day at the exclamation of a very pretty 
girl in the chariot on the way to the Flume, when they 
pulled up by me down the river and asked to see my 
basket. ' Oh, I want to kiss them/ she said." 

" You did'nt know her ?" 

" Never saw her before, or since." 

" It was a fresh remark. I like it. I wonder who she 
was. It's a pleasant thing now and then to hear a bit of 
nature out of red lips." 

" Your experience in the utterances of red lips is rather 
limited, Major.. I was telling you just now that you live 
too much on books and too little on realities." 

" On red lips, for instance ?" 

" Exactly. An old bachelor like you has great oppor- 
tunities in life. You might take to fishing even, and per- 
haps some day, when you have a full basket, a pretty girl 
may ask you to let her look at the speckled beauties, and 
then — what might not happen as a consequence ?" 

" Bah ! I've been through it all." 

" You ?" 

U T J» 

" Fishing and — " 

" Red lips — yes. Redder than this blood of the grape, 
and a thousand times as maddening. What do you boys 
of these late years fancy you can teach me, either in sports 
of the forest or loves of the town. I had drunk all the 
wine of that life up, and the cup was empty before you 
were born." 

The Major was excited, and his dates were evidently 
confused. But it was refreshing to be called a boy, and 



NIGHT IN THE FOREST. 27 1 

I urged him on. He told stories of old sporting days, 
which proved that he was no idle boaster when he said 
he had gone through all that. He grew fairly brilliant as 
he talked. 

"I remember," said he, "the very last night I ever 
passed in the forest. It had been some years then since 
I had given up my rifle and rod, but an old companion 
persuaded me to join him in November in Sullivan County, 
in New York, and I went up the Erie Railroad to Narrows- 
burg, and struck out into the woods for a ten-mile tramp 
to our appointed place of meeting. I knew the country 
as well as you know these mountains, but at evening I 
had loitered so that instead of being near the cabin of 
our old guide I was three miles away; darkness was set- 
tling down fast, and a heavy snow-storm was evidently 
coming on. I, who had often said I would never camp 
out again so long as roofs remained among the inhabit- 
ants of earth, found myself wishing for the darkest hole in 
a rock or a hollow tree. Is it that the ground is not so 
soft a bed as it used to be, or have we grown harder ? 

"Night and gloom thickened around me. My eyes, 
from watching the clouds, retained vision of them longer 
than one who opened his suddenly at the place and time 
would have believed possible. The trees had passed 
through the various shapes and shadows which they as- 
sume in the twilight and first darkness. They were grim, 
tall giants, some standing, some leaning, some fallen 
prone and lying as they fell, dead and still ; and some had 
gone to dust that lay in long mounds, like the graves of 
old kings. I kept on, pushing my way steadily, for there 
was no spot that I could find fit for a resting-place, and 
I had hope of reaching a good point for the night-halt by 
proceeding. I hit on it at length. There was a hill down 



272 I GO A- FISHING. 

which I went, tripping at every fourth step, and plunging 
into indescribable heaps of brush and leaves and stones, 
until I came out suddenly on the edge of a piece of burnt 
land, which a fire had gone over last summer. A pile of 
fallen trees lay on the very border of the unburned forest, 
and I sought shelter among them from a driving blast, 
which now brought snow with it in quantities. I faced 
the tempest a moment, and thought of that passage in 
which Festus described the angels thronging to Eden, and 
' alighting like to snow-flakes.' I wished that there were 
more similarity, and that the flakes were fewer and farther 
between. But there was a terrible reality in the night 
and storm, which drove poetry from my brain. At this 
moment I discovered a pile of hemlock bark, gathered by 
some one to be carried to the tanneries. It was the first 
indication of this being an inhabited part of the world; 
but it was no proof that inhabitants were near, for these 
piles of bark are often gathered in remote parts of the 
forest. But it was a great discovery. There was enough 
of it to roof the City Hall ; and in fifteen minutes there 
was as neat a cabin built among the fallen timber as any 
man could desire under the circumstances. It was artist- 
ically built too, for I had built such before ; and, by-the- 
by, I recollect one which Joe Willis once constructed, in 
which the chimney arrangements proved unsafe, and we 
awoke at about daylight among the flames of our entire 
establishment. True, he laid it to my restlessness in the 
night, and actually charged me with getting my feet into 
the fire and scattering the coals, while I dreamed of the 
immortal — who was it that won immortality by setting fire 
to the Temple of Diana? But it was false, atrociously 

false. I was dreaming of , but let that pass. 

" The wind grew furious, and the snow came thicker, 



NIGHT IN THE FOREST. 273 

finer, and faster, but none reached me as I sat in my 
shelter, open indeed on one side, but fully protected there 
by a fire built at a safe distance, which blazed as a pile 
should blaze that was the funeral pyre of more than one 
of the forest giants. 

" And now the sound of the wind in the forest grew ter- 
rible in the grandeur of its harmonies. A lonesome man, 
far from my fellows, the sole human companion of the 
storm, the sole human witness of the fury of the tempest, 
I sat, or lay, half-reclined on the heap of brush that I had 
gathered for a bed, and with my hand screening my face 
from the intense heat of the fire, looked out into the abyss 
of darkness, and watched the snow-flakes driving from far 
up down toward the flames, as if they sought instantane- 
ous and glad relief from cold and wretched wanderings ; 
and I wondered whether, of intelligent creatures, I was 
alone in that wild, grand, and magnificent scene. 

" Sometimes I thought I could hear human voices in 
the lull of the storm ; but oftener I imagined that the in- 
habitants of other worlds were near, and that they were 
unearthly sounds which were so strange and abrupt and 
startling; and when I closed my eyes I was certain 
that, among all the confusion, I could hear the rushing 
wings of more than ten legions of angels ; and in a mo- 
ment of still calm, one of those awful pauses that occur in 
furious storms, in the deep, solemn silence I heard a cry, 
a faint but wild and mournful cry, and it seemed far off, 
farther than the forest, farther than the opposite mount- 
ain, beyond the confines of the world, and the cry grew 
into a wail — a wail of unutterable anguish, agony, and 
woe — such a wail as might have been Eve's when the 
flaming sword flashed between her and Abel; and it 
came nearer, nearer, nearer, and it filled the air, the sky, 

S 



274 I GO A- FISHING. 

the universe it seemed, and thrilled through my soul till I 
sprang to my feet, and dashed out into the blinding, mad 
tempest. It was so long since I had heard it, that I had 
forgotten that voice of the mountain wind ; but now I re- 
membered it as the blasts swept by me, wailing, shouting, 
laughing, shrieking, and I retired to my warm nook, and 
laughed back at the storm, and slept and dreamed. I 
never slept better. 

" I awoke at day-break, and the storm was over. A 
blue break in the clouds let through the light of a Novem- 
ber moon, clear, soft, and exceedingly beautiful. Dawn 
drove the moonlight out of the forest, and I pushed on 
then and got my breakfast with old Steven in his cabin. 
I have never slept in the forest since that night. Help 
yourself to the claret, Effendi. It seems to me it's grow- 
ing cold. Yes ; I have led that life, and liked it well 
enough once." 

"You've told me of your forest experiences, Major, but 
you rather fight shy of the subject of the red lips." 

" I tell you I have tasted the wine of red lips to intox- 
ication : but there were lips that I never touched whose 
utterances were more intoxicating." 

The Major sat looking into the fire; for though it was 
August we had bright wood fires in the evenings, as we 
often do at the Profile House. He looked very steadily at 
the coals on the hearth, shivered once as if he were cold, 
bolted two glasses of claret in quick succession, and I 
waited, confident that I should hear his story at last. 
Soon he began to talk. 

" Draw your chair close up. Light another pipe, and 
fill your glass. It is a cold night. My old bones shudder 
when I hear the wind wail over the house and through 
the trees. Capital claret, that ! John, come in here. 



THE MAJORS STORY. 275 

Open another bottle of claret, John. What, not another ! 
Certainly, man, I must have it. This is only the second, 

and Mr. has drank half, of course. Not drank any ! 

You don't mean to say that he has been drinking nothing 
all the blessed evening ? Effendi, I thought you knew my 
rules better than that. But you always would have your 
own way. 

" One more bottle, John — but one. It shall be the last ; 
and, John, get some Maraschino — one of the thick, black 
bottles with the small necks, and open it. But you know 
how, old fellow, and just do your best to make us com- 
fortable. 

" How the wind howls ! My boy, I am seventy-three 
years old, and seven days over. My birthday was a week 
ago to-day. 

" An old bachelor ! Yea, verily. One of the oldest 
kind. But what is age? What is the paltry sum of 
seventy years ? Do you think I am any older in my soul 
than I was half a century ago ? Do you think, because 
my blood flows slower, that my mind thinks more slowly, 
my feelings spring up less freely, my hopes are less buoy- 
ant, less cheerful, if they look forward only weeks instead 
of years ? I tell you, boy, that seventy years are a day in 
the sweep of memory; and 'once young forever young' 
is the motto of an immortal soul. I know I am what men 
call old; I know my cheeks are wrinkled like parchment, 
and my lips are thin, and my head gray even to silver. But 
in my soul I feel that I am young, and I shall be young 
till the earthly ceases and the unearthly and eternal be- 
gins. 

" I have not grown one day older than I was at thirty- 
two. I have never advanced a day since then. All my 
life long since that has been one day — one short day ; no 



276 I GO A -FISHING. 

night, no rest, no succession of hours, events, or thoughts 
has marked any advance. 

" I have been living forty years by the light of one 
memory — by the side of one grave. 

"John, set the bottle down on the hearth. You may 
go. You need not sit up for me. We will see each other 
to bed to-night. Go, old fellow, and sleep soundly. 

" She was the purest angel that flesh ever imprisoned, 
the most beautiful child of Eve. I can see her now. Her 
eyes raying the light of heaven — her brow white, calm, 
and holy — her lips wreathed with the blessing of her 
smile. She was as graceful as a form seen in dreams, 
and she moved through the scenes around her as you have 
seen the angelic visitors of your slumber move through 
crowded assemblies, without effort, apparently with some 
superhuman aid. 

" She was fitted to adorn the splendid house in which 
she was born and grew to womanhood. It was a grand 
old place, built in the midst of a growth of oaks that 
might have been there when Columbus discovered Amer- 
ica, and seemed likely to stand a century longer. They 
are standing yet, and the wind to-night makes a wild la- 
ment through their branches. 

" I recall the scenery of the familiar spot. There was 
a stream of water that dashed down the rocks a hundred 
yards from the house, and which kept always full and 
fresh an acre of pond, over which hung willows and ma- 
ples and other trees, while on the surface the white blos- 
som of the lotus nodded lazily on the ripples with Egyp- 
tian sleepiness and languor. 

"The old house was built of dark stone, and had a 
massive appearance, not relieved by the sombre shade in 
which it stood. The sunshine seldom penetrated to the 



THE MAJORS STORY. 277 

ground in the summer months, except in one spot, just in 
front of the library windows, where it used to lie and 
sleep in the grass, as if it loved the old place. And if 
sunshine loved it, why should not I ? 

" General Lewis was one of the pleasant, old-fashioned 
men, now quite gone out of memory, as well as out of ex- 
istence. He loved his horses, his dogs, his house, his 
punch. He loved his nephew Tom, uncouth, rough cub 
that he was; but above horses, dogs, house, or all to- 
gether, he loved his daughter Sarah, and I loved her too. 

" Yes, you may look at me as you will, I loved Sarah 
Lewis; and, by all the gods, I love her now as I loved her 
then, and as I shall love her if I meet her again. 

" Call it folly, call it boyish, call it an old man's whim, 
an old man's second childhood, I care not by what name 
you call it; it is enough that to-night the image of that 
young girl stands before me splendidly beautiful in all the 
holiness of her young glad life, and I could bow down on 
my knees and worship her now again. 

" Why did I say again ? For forty years I have not 
ceased to worship her. If I kneel to pray in the morn- 
ing, she passes between me and God. If I would read 
the prayers at evening twilight, she looks up at me from 
the page. If I would worship on a Sabbath morning in 
the church, she looks down on me from some unfathom- 
able distance, some unapproachable height, and I pray to 
her as if she were my hope, my heaven. 

" Sometimes in the winter nights I feel a coldness steal- 
ing over me, and icy fingers are feeling about my heart, 
as if to grasp and still it. I lie calmly, quietly, and I think 
my hour is at hand ; and through the gloom, and through 
the mists and films that gather over my vision, I see her 
afar off, still the same angel in the distant heaven, and I 



278 I GO A- FISHING. 

reach out my arms to her, and I cry aloud on God to let 
me go find her, and on her to come to me, and then thick 
darkness settles on me. 

" The doctor calls this apoplexy, and says I shall some 
day die in a fit of it. What do doctors know of the tre- 
mendous influences that are working on our souls? He, 
in his scientific stupidity, calls it a disease, and warns me 
against wine and high living, as if I did not understand 
what it is, and why my vision at such times reaches so 
very far into the deep unknown. 

" I have spoken of Tom Lewis, her cousin. Rumor 
said he was the old man's heir in equal proportion with 
the daughter ; for he had been brought up in the family, 
and had always been treated -as a son. He was a good 
fellow, if he was rough, for he had the goodness that all 
who came within her influence must have. 

" I have seen her look the devil out of him often. I 
remember once when the horses had behaved in a way 
not to suit him, and he had let an oath or two escape his 
lips preparatory to putting on the whip. We were riding 
together down the avenue, and he raised the lash. At 
the moment he caught her eye. She was walking up 
from the lodge, where she had been to see a sick child. 
She saw the raised whip, and her eye caught his. He did 
not strike. The horses escaped for that time. He drove 
them quietly through the gate, and three miles and back 
without a word of anger. 

"Did I tell you I was her cousin also? A second 
cousin on her mother's side, not on the General's. We 
lived not far off, and I lived much of my time at his house. 
Tom and myself had been inseparable, and we did not 
conceal our rivalry from each other. 

" ' Tom/ said I, one morning, ' why can't you be con- 



THE MAJORS STORY. 279 

tent with half the General's fortune, and let me have the 
other half?' 

" ' Bah ! Jerry,' said he, ' as if that would be any more 
even, when you want Sarah with it. In Heaven's name, 
take the half of the money, if that's all you want' 

" ' Can't we fix it so as to make an even division, Tom ? 
Take all the fortune, and let me have her, and I'll call it 
square.' 

" ' Just what I was going to propose to you. Be rea- 
sonable now, Jerry, and get out of the way. You must 
see she doesn't care a copper for you.' 

" I twirled a rosebud in my fingers that she had given 
me that morning, and replied — 

" ' Poor devil ! I did not think you could be so infatu- 
ated. Why, Tom, there is no chance for you under the 
sun. But go ahead ; find it out as you will. I'm sorry 
for you.' 

" A hundred such talks we used to have, and she never 
gave either of us one particle more of encouragement 
than the other. She was like a sister to us both, and 
neither dared to break the spell of our perfect happiness 
by asking her to be more. 

" And so time passed on. 

" One summer afternoon we were off together on horse- 
back, all three of us, over the mountain and down the 
valley. We were returning toward sunset, sauntering 
along the road down the side of the hill. 

" Philip, stir the fire a little. That bottle of claret is 
rather cold, it seems to me, or I am a little chilly my- 
self. Perhaps it is the recollection of that day that 
chills me. 

" I had made up my mind, if opportunity occurred, to 
tell her that day all that I had thought for years. I had 



280 I GO A- FISHING. 

determined to know, once for all, if she would love me 
or no. 

" If not, I would go, I cared not where ; the world was 
broad enough, and it should be to some place where I 
should never see her face again, never hear her voice 
again, never bow down and worship her magnificent beau- 
ty again. I would go to Russia and offer myself to the 
Czar, or to Syria and join the Druses, or to India, China, 
any where to fight. All my notions were military, I re- 
member, and all my ideas were of war and death on the 
field. 

" I rode by her side, and looked up at her occasionally, 
and thought she was looking splendidly. I had never 
seen her more so. Every attitude was grace, every look 
was life and spirit. 

" Tom clung close to her. One would have thought 
he was watching the very opportunity I was after myself. 
Now he rode a few paces forward, and as I was catching 
my breath to say ' Sarah,' he would rein up and fall back 
to his place, and I would make some flat remark that 
made me seem like a fool to myself, if not to her. 

" ' What's the matter with you, Jerry ?' said she, at 
length. 

" 'Jerry's in love,' said Tom. 

" I could have thrashed him on the spot. 

" ' In love ! Jerry in love !' and she turned her large 
brown eyes toward me. 

" In vain I sought to fathom them, and arrive at some 
conclusion whether or no the subject interested her with 
special force. 

" The eyes remained fixed, till I blundered out the old 
saw — 'Tom judges others by himself 

" Then the eyes turned to Tom, and he pleaded guilty 



THE MAJOR'S STORY. 28 1 

by his awkward looks, and half-blushes, and averted eyes, 
and forced laugh. 

" 'By Heaven !' thought I, 'what would I not give for 
Tom's awkwardness now ! The scoundrel is winning his 
way by it.' 

" ' Jerry, is Tom in love ?' 

" The naivete of the question, the correctness of it, the 
very simplicity of the thing was irresistible, and I could 
not repress a smile that grew into a broad laugh. Tom 
joined in it, and we made the woods ring with our mer- 
riment. 

" ' I say, Tom, isn't that your whip lying back yonder in 
the road ?' 

" ' Confound it, yes ; the cord has broken from my 
wrist;' and he rode back for it. 

" ' Jerry, whom does Tom love ?' said she, quickly, turn- 
ing to me. 

" ' You,' said I, bluntly. 

" ' Why, of course; but who is he in love with, I mean ?' 

" It was a curious way to get at it. Could I be justi- 
fied ? It was not asking what I had intended, but it was 
getting at it in another way, and just as well, perhaps. It 
was, at all events, asking Tom's question for him, and it 
saved me the embarrassment of putting it as my own. I 
determined this in an instant. 

" ' Sarah, could you love Tom well enough to marry 
him ?' 

" ' I ! Jerry; what do you mean ?' 

" ' Suppose Tom wants you to be his wife, will you 
marry him ?' 

" ' I don't know — I can't tell — I never thought of such 
a thing. You don't think he has any such idea, do you ?' 

"That was my answer. It was enough as far as it 



252 I GO A- FISHING. 

went, but I was no better off than before. She did not 
love Tom, or she would never have answered thus. But 
did she love me ? Would she marry me ? Wouldn't she 
receive the idea in just the same way ? 

" I looked back. Tom was on the ground, had picked 
up his whip, and had one foot in the stirrup, ready to 
mount again. I gulped down my heart that was up in 
my throat, and spoke out — 

" ' Sarah, will you marry me ?' 

"Philip, she turned her eyes again toward me — those 
large brown eyes, those holy eyes — and blessed me with 
their unutterably glorious gaze. To my dying hour I 
shall not forget that gaze ; to all eternity it will remain 
in my soul. She looked at me one look ; and whether it 
was pity, sorrow, surprise, or love, I can not tell you, that 
filled them and overflowed toward me from out their im- 
measurable depths; but, Philip, it was the last light of 
those eyes I ever saw — the last, the last. 

"Is there any thing left in that bottle? Thank you. 
Just a glassful. You will not take any ? Then, by your 
leave, I will finish it. My story is nearly ended, and I 
will not keep you up much longer. 

"We had not noticed, so absorbed had we been in our 
pleasant talk, that a black cloud had risen in the west 
and obscured the sun, and covered the entire sky; and 
even the sultry air had not called our attention to the 
coming thunder-storm. 

" As she looked at me, even as she fixed her eyes on 
mine, a flash, blinding and fierce, fell on the top of a 
pine-tree by the road-side, not fifty yards from us, and 
the crash of the thunder shook the foundations of the 
hills. 

" For a moment all was dazzling, burning, blazing 



THE MAJOR'S STORY. 283 

light; then sight was gone, and a momentary darkness 
settled on our eyes. The horses crouched to the ground 
in terror, and Sarah bowed her head as if in the presence 
of God. 

"All this was the work of an instant, and the next, 
Tom's horse sprang by us on a furious gallop, dragging 
Tom by the stirrup. He had been in the act of mount- 
ing when the flash came, and his horse swerved and 
jumped so that his foot caught, and he was dragged with 
his head on the ground. 

" There was a point in the road, about fifty yards 
ahead, where it divided into two. The one was the. car- 
riage-track, which wound down the mountain by easy de- 
scents ; the other was a foot-path, which was a short, pre- 
cipitous cut to a point on the carriage - road nearly a 
quarter of a mile below. 

" Calling to Sarah to keep back and wait, I drove the 
spurs into my horse, and went down the steep path. 
Looking back, I saw her following, her horse making tre- 
mendous speed. She kept the carriage-road, following 
on after Tom, and I pressed on, thinking to intercept his 
horse below. 

"The pace was terrible. I could hear them thunder- 
ing down the track above. I looked up and caught sight 
of them through the trees. I looked down, and saw a 
gully before me full eighteen feet wide and as many deep. 

"A great horse was that black horse Cassar, and he 
took the gully at a flying leap that landed us far over it, 
and a moment later I was at the point where the roads 
again met, but only in time to see the other two horses 
go by at a furious pace, Sarah's abreast of the gray, and 
she reaching her hand out, bravely trying to grasp the 
flying rein, as her horse went leap for leap with him. 



284 I GO A -FISHING. 

" To ride close behind them was worse than useless in 
such a case. It would but serve to increase their speed; 
so I fell back a dozen rods and followed, watching the 
end. 

" At the foot of the mountain the river ran, broad and 
deep, spanned by the bridge at the narrowest point. To 
reach the bridge, the road took a short turn up stream, 
directly on the bank. 

" On swept the gray and the black horse, side by side, 
down the hill-side, not fifty leaps along the level ground, 
and then came the turn. 

" She was on the off-side. At the sharp turn she 
pressed ahead a half-length and reined her horse across 
the gray's shoulder, if possible to turn him up toward 
the bridge. 

" It was all over in an instant. The gray was the 
heavier horse. He pressed her close; the black horse 
yielded, gave way toward the fence, stumbled, and the 
fence, a light rail, broke with a crash, and they went over, 
all together into the deep black stream. 

" Still, still the sound of that crash and plunge is in 
my ears. Still I can see them go headlong down that 
bank together into the black water ! 

" I never knew exactly what I did then. When I was 
conscious I found myself swimming around in a circle, 
diving occasionally to find them, but in vain. The gray 
horse swam ashore and stood on the bank by my black, 
with distended nostrils and trembling limbs, shaking from 
head to foot with terror. The other black horse was 
floating down the surface of the stream, drowned. His 
mistress was nowhere visible, and Tom was gone also. 
" I found her at last. 
" Yes, she was dead ! 



THE MAJOR'S STORY. 285 

"Restore her? No. A glance at her face showed 
how vain all such hope was. Never was human face so 
angelic. She was already one of the saintly — one of the 
immortals — and the beauty and glory of her new life had 
left some faint likeness of itself on her dead form and 
face. 

" I said I had never grown a day older since that time. 
You know now why. I have never ceased to think of 
her as on that day. I have never lost the blessing of 
those eyes as they looked on me in the forest on the 
mountain road. I have never left her, never grown away 
from her. If, in the resurrection, we are to resume the 
bodies most exactly fitted to represent our whole lives ; 
if, as I have sometimes thought, we shall rise in the forms 
we wore when some great event stamped our souls for- 
ever, then I am certain that I shall awake in form and 
feature as I was that day, and no memorial will remain 
of an hour of my life after her burial. 

"We buried her in the old vault close by the house, 
among the oaks. Beautiful to the very last. 

" My voice is broken. I can not talk any more. You 
have the story. That is the whole of it. God bless you, 
my boy. You have listened — patiently — to — my — talk. 

" Good-night. Go to bed. I'll stay here in this chair 
awhile. I don't — exactly — feel — like — sleeping — just 
yet." 

I left him sitting there ; his head bowed on his breast, 
his eyes closed, his breathing heavy. My own eyes were 
misty. 

In the hall I found John, sitting bolt upright in a large 
chair. 

"Why, John, I thought the Major sent you to bed long 
aero ?" 



286 I GO A- FISHING. 

" Yes, sir ; the Major always sends me to bed at the 
third bottle, sir, and I always doesn't go. He's been a 
telling you the old story, now hasn't he, sir ?" 

" What old story, John ?" 

" Why, all about Miss Lewis, and Mister Tom, and the 
General ?" 

" Yes." 

John laid his long black finger knowingly up by the 
side of his nose, and looked at me. 

" Why, John — you don't mean to say — eh ?" 

" All the claret, sir ?" 

"What ! Sarah and the black horse, and — " 

"All claret, sir." 

" John, my man, go in and take care of him. He is 
either asleep or drunk. Curious that ! Why didn't I 
think that a man was hardly to be believed after the sec- 
ond bottle, and perfectly incredible on the third. By Jove ! 
he is a trump at a story, though." 

It would be difficult to describe all that I dreamed 
about that night. 



XIV. 

WHAT FLIES TO CAST ON A SUNDAY. 

I have passed a great deal of my life in forest sports, 
and I yield to no man in knowing how to enjoy them. 
And chiefest among the enjoyments of the forest I have 
found always the serenity of Sabbath rest. It comes to 
the wise sportsman with all the blessings that it brings to 
the weary laborer in the city, and with a thousand others; 
and he is unworthy to call himself a wise man who wets 
a line or puts cartridge in a rifle on Sunday in the forest. 

For every man, whatsoever be his disposition, a calm 
day for thoughtful rest, for the repose of peaceful thinking, 
has its value. The Monday is fuller of enjoyment for 
that rest, and it is well, for one who doubts, to try it. 

"What shall I do all day?" do you ask? Do, man? 
Think ! It won't harm you. Even if you have gone into 
the forest to escape from thought, you will find that Sun- 
day thinking may be full of calm and of balm. Set your- 
self at work to remember other Sundays in your life and 
how they passed. Mayhap you will find one, in all your 
memory, that is worth remembering. I can recall a hun- 
dred which I never want to forget. 

I remember one, only last summer, that is pleasant and 
profitable to recall. We were at the Profile House, and, 
though there were about two hundred and fifty persons 
in the house, we had no clergyman among them. This 



256 I GO A -FISHING. 

does not often occur in the Profile House. As a general 
rule we have a service in the large drawing-room every 
Sunday morning. But on that day we were left to hear 
the sermons of the mountain winds. In the afternoon 

my friend S and myself inquired about the church at 

Franconia village, which is some five miles distant down 
the mountain, and were told that there would be a service 
at five o'clock. So we took Jack and the buggy and went 
down. (Did I ever tell you of Jack, and how Dupont and 
myself bought him some years ago in Northern New 
Hampshire, and have made all sorts of sporting expe- 
ditions with him, and what a horse of horses he is ? If 
not, perhaps I will tell you all that some day.) As we 
drove out of the mountain gorge and the forest the Sab- 
bath sunshine was making the earth to have somewhat 
of the hues of paradise. Far away, miles on miles of 
land slept in the golden light, and blue hills lifted their 
foreheads to God. Angels might love earth on such a 
day. Doubtless thus the land appeared to the Hebrew 
prophet when he saw it from Pisgah, exceeding beautiful ; 
and I sometimes wonder whether that vision was not 
given him but as the prevision of that which he was to 
see, when, turning away his longing gaze from the hills of 
Judah, he suddenly beheld the holier hills of God in the 
land which to him was no longer one of hope or promise. 
We reached the little Baptist church in Franconia in 
an hour or less. All was quiet around it, and we feared 
there was some mistake in our information. But the 
sound of a familiar hymn coming from the open door re- 
assured us, and leaving Jack to stand without a halter 
(for he resents the indignity of being fastened, but never 
moves if you trust him to stand), we entered the little 
building. Instead of a regular service we found a prayer- 



SUNDAY AT FRANCONIA. 289 

meeting, but I think I never attended a religious meeting 
of any kind which was more impressive. A few men and 
women, the farmers of the country, were assembled, and 
they seemed to be deeply impressed with sorrow that their 
numbers were so few, when there were enough of their 
neighbors to fill the church. The clergyman sat in a 
chair in the aisle, and conducted the service by an occa- 
sional remark and repeated requests that those present 
would pray. And pray they did, simply, fervently, and I 
doubt not effectually. You can not imagine the refresh- 
ing and calming character of such an afternoon service to 
one who has been for a long time past among less peace- 
ful scenes. As I sat down, I looked to the window and 
saw Mount Lafayette standing up still and solemn in the 
blue sky, like a giant waiting the will of a more gigantic 
master, and as they sang the old familiar hymn, I. began 
to recall where I was just a year ago on that day. In the 
morning I heard mass in an ancient church where kings 
and kaisers and bishops and stout old knights of many 
old centuries were at rest, heedless of the music of the 
organ, heedless of the thunders of war which were to burst 
on Germany within six hours. For at noon that day came 
the declaration of war, and in the afternoon I stood in a 
crowd of ten thousand Germans arming for the contest 
which was to rebuild the throne of Charlemagne and over- 
throw the throne of Napoleon. What a wild sweep of 
the tempest of human wrath did Europe feel in that one 
short year ! But then and there, in Franconia, what 
thought had the men and women of thrones or their 
changes ? To them the events of life are great which af- 
fect their own families, and the world is of small impor- 
tance. They should live near to God who live in quiet 
villages or farms among the mountains. And some of 

T 



290 I GO A -FISHING. 

them do live very near to heaven. As I thought this the 
hymn was ended and a momentary silence ensued, and 
then an old man with snowy hair rose feebly and spoke 
in a broken voice. He said only this : That he had made 
up his mind to live more and more with his eye fixed on 
the glory to come. For, said he, " I am old and child- 
less ; I have lived eighty-five, and going on to eighty- six 
years. I am a great deal alone in the fields at my work, 
and I think all the time of the glorious home which I 
know I shall go to. Oh that home ! My old wife said to 
me when she went away last year, ' It is a glorious home 
we will have together there, and you will soon come to 
me, and we shall be together forever !' " And the old 
man's voice broke down entirely when he came to speak 
of this his great loss, but even as his voice faltered I could 
see a light in his old eye that told me he saw, right 
through the window of the little church, over the lofty 
summit of Lafayette, in the blue distance of that sky, the 
glory of which he had spoken, and the home in which she 
had promised to wait for him. Thank God they will be 
young again together there, and neither the simple imag- 
ination of the Franconia farmer nor the dweller all his life 
in palaces can begin to picture the peace which will there 
be after the storm of this life. And then, when the old 
man ceased to speak and there was silence for a moment 
in the little assembly, suddenly and very sweetly a wom- 
an's voice, clear and pure and strong, floated over our 
heads as she sang the refrain, "When I've been there ten 
thousand years." I looked up and saw her face — that of 
a Franconia girl, or young wife — clear-cut features, fair 
complexion, with a speaking eye now fixed in an upward 
look as she sang. She would be astonished doubtless if 
she knew the fancy that possessed me at that moment, 



THE LITTLE CHURCH. 201 

but I will tell what it was. Do you remember — per- 
haps you don't, for I have forgotten myself — who painted 
that St. Cecilia seated at the organ, which I used to ad- 
mire so much in Florence, but her face was the very 
face of that picture, and I would have given much for a 
photograph of it that instant as she looked up and 
sang. And then all the people sang, as I have not heard 
for years, and while they sang the old sad years went 
over me in a deep strong wave, and I was in the company 
of the dear ones of old times, never to come back again — 
never — never. How many are gone to God with whom 
we used to sing hymns in the Sabbath evenings ! And 
so it has come to pass that hymns which we then loved 
as full of hope and cheer are now inexpressibly sad, and 
we almost weep to hear them. 

Then one and another and another of the little assem- 
bly prayed, and we came out into the last of the sunlight, 
and the land was lying blessed by it, beautiful beyond de- 
scription. And then we drove up the mountains, looking 
all the while up to their lofty tops as we ascended, and the 
light became purple and gold on the hills, like the robes 
of Solomon. 

And I looked at Lafayette and saw the gorge of the 
White Cross, down which the water in summer pours into 
the brook which joins the outlet of Echo Lake, and this 
brook in the gorge looked like a mountain path going 
right up to the summit. All the way I had my eyes on 
that path, and followed up it the slow footsteps of one 
who was ascending the hill of life, and who at last reached 
the top and went on into the blue above. 

The forest opened before us as we ascended, and at 
length we entered the gloom. But the last rays of the 
sun were shining through the trees, and here and there a 



292 I GO A-FISHING. 

tall trunk was lit like a great tree of gold. The squirrels 
were out for a last run before night, and occasionally 
along the road a chipmunk was sitting up wiping his 
whiskers with his forepaws, undisturbed by our approach, 
nor moving as we passed within a few feet of him. The 
voices of the birds filled the woods. I don't know what 
bird it is, but there is one who utters only one long, clear, 
musical whistle, broken by one or two pauses. So we 

drove on through the forest, and and myself talked 

of drives we took together the year previous in Switzer- 
land and Germany, and how together we saw the fires of 
hell surrounding the old cathedral of Strasbourg, and 
awoke in the night to hear the thunder of the bombard- 
ment ; and so at last we came out of the woods at Echo 
Lake, and John, the Indian, stopped us to tell me of a 
large trout that had been breaking near the boat-house, 
as they generally do of a Sunday, and then we drove on to 
the house, and were suddenly in the crowd of fashion and 
splendor at the Profile. 

That was a Sunday worth remembering, according to 
my notion. Take my advice and let the trout alone on a 
Sunday, and become fishers of thought, drawing bright 
and good things out of the depths of memory. They will 
rise to your cast with great freedom, and take hold strong- 
ly, and it is a pleasure to land them, and once secured 
they become an enjoyable possession forever. 

I venture another bit of advice, based on some experi- 
ence as angler and traveler. I commend this rule for the 
Sunday : To worship God with his people, if there be ac- 
cessible to you any where a church calling itself Chris- 
tian, of whatever denomination. It is a good plan, and 
will be found remunerative. I have knelt on many a 
Sunday morning with Greeks, with Copts, with Armenians, 



MONTE CASINO. 293 

with Romans, and I can't say that it ever interfered with 
the sense of devotion, the act of adoration, the confidence 
in the presence of the Divine Master, that I was kneeling 
among those who did not believe precisely as I did. 
When the Ethiopian asked Philip what hindered that he 
should be accepted in the visible church by baptism, 
Philip told him it was a question of belief, and he replied, 
" I believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God," and on 
the instant Philip stopped the chariot, baptized him, and 
disappeared. It's a short and mighty story that, which 
polemic theologians in all the churches would do well to 
study. Enough for me, an ignorant layman, to be con- 
tent to worship with those who believe as much as the 
Ethiopian believed, call themselves or be called by what 
name they may. 

The memory of Sundays gone is the angler's best Sun- 
day company when he is alone in the forest. Let me re- 
call another such memory. 

Away up in the heart of Italy, on the interior road from 
Naples to Rome, among hills and valleys that are beauti- 
ful in their vine-clad splendor, rises a strange sugar-loaf 
hill four hundred feet or so high, known to fame as Monte 
Casino. Its summit is covered with a vast mass of build- 
ings, presenting to the eye from below the appearance of 
a small fortified city. The approach to it is by a road 
which winds in a zigzag line up the almost perpendicular 
side of the hill, making a dozen or twenty sharp angles, 
back and forth, before it ends in the low archway through 
the massive walls which admits one who has accomplished 
the difficult ascent into the great monastery of the Bene- 
dictines. For this is the possession- of that wealthy and 
once powerful order of monks, and is to this day the most 
splendid of the religious houses of Europe. 



294 1 GO A -FISHING. 

When I was last in Italy we passed through the valley 
by rail, and saw the great pile of the monastery at a dis- 
tance. Years ago, when there were no rails in Italy, I 
drove one Saturday night into, the little village of San 
Germano, where was a miserable inn, but in which Franz, 
my German servant, made us comfortable. For Franz 
was valet, cook, purveyor, a host in himself, who, though 
but a servant, looked down on couriers, and was worth 
any dozen of them condensed into one. 

On Sunday morning, though a tempest was blowing, I 
climbed the hill to the monastery in time for the early 
mass. And after it was over I remained alone in the 
gorgeous chapel, occupied more with recalling the mighty 
faith of the great old Benedictines than with looking at 
the splendor which surrounded me. 

I have seen a great many fine buildings, many grand 
ruins, but I know of no place where I was more impressed 
with the grandeur of every thing than in this old pile. 
Perhaps it was because of my respect for the order whose 
wealth had constructed it ; for among the folios on my 
library shelves there is no series of volumes that have 
given me more employment and enjoyment than those 
grand old Acta, the Deeds of the Order of St. Benedict. 

Let me remind you, if you have perchance forgotten it, 
of the majesty of that great order. Founded in early 
times by the distinguished priest whose name it bears, it 
enrolled in its ranks the most illustrious men of a thou- 
sand years. They were the instructors of all the youth 
for centuries. They preserved for us all the great treas- 
ures of ancient classics by their diligent and laborious 
copying. From them sprang the Cistercians, the Carthu- 
sians, the Monks of St. Bernard, the Trappists, and a 
dozen other orders, all branches of the order of St. Bene- 



BENEDICTINES. 295 

diet. More than twenty popes, over fifteen thousand bish- 
ops, and nearly fifty thousand of the canonized saints of 
the Roman Church, including the great St. Bernard, and 
many like him, came from the Benedictines. 

From this brief summary of their history, you may be- 
lieve me when I say that they have in former years 
swayed the destinies of the world, the men who began life 
in these quiet cells, or walking this ancient court. Some 
have worn the coat of mail under the monk's gown, and 
swinging swords with strong right arms have done great 
service for the Cross and Church on hard-fought fields. 
Some have gone on long travel into distant lands, un- 
armed, without shoes or scrip, valiantly bearing the sacred 
symbol into heathen countries, with no protection but its 
own mission of peace and love. They succored the poor, 
they supported the fainting, they shrived the dying. They 
received princes in their arms at birth, and baptized them 
for the struggles of life ; they leaned above dying old 
monarchs, and anointed them for the slumber of universal 
equality. They were popes, cardinals, bishops, priests, 
monks, and martyrs. There was no land into which they 
did not penetrate, no nation whose language they did not 
speak, no palace too magnificent to receive them, no hut 
so lowly that they shrank from entering it with the mis- 
sion of Christ. 

I honor the history of devoted men in every church ; 
and he is worse than a heathen who refuses to recognize 
that which is Christ-like in humanity, whether under a 
Dominican cowl, the gown of a Lutheran, or the bonnet 
of a Covenanter. 

The monastery is vast in extent, but now peopled with 
only thirty or forty monks. It has been spared by the 
Italian government, which has broken up other monas- 



296 I GO A -FISHING. 

teries in Italy, its age and historical importance having 
preserved it from secularization. The chapel or church 
is without exception the most gorgeous interior in Europe 
or the world. I am astonished that it has escaped the 
eyes of so many travelers. The surface of all the walls, 
columns, and in short the entire interior, except the pave- 
ment, is one mass of unbroken Florentine mosaic. The 
Sicilian jaspers, carnelians, and agates are distributed with 
splendid effect. The columns supporting the architrave 
are of white marble, but there is no white marble visible, 
except a wreath of roses ascending spirally, which is carved 
in relief. All the rest of the column is covered with jas- 
per and splendid stones in exquisite mosaic, around which 
the white wreath seems to be entwined. 

As I stood there a Benedictine brother approached me, 
and, when he found that I had some interest in the his- 
tory of the order as well as in the building, entered into 
conversation, and after a while said, " I will send for the 
organist, and we will have some music." 

The organ ranks with those at Palermo and Haarlem. 
It is in Italy placed second in the world, that at Palermo 
being first. I sat down on a pedestal of one of the col- 
umns — there was no other seat — and Fra Bartolomeo (not 
he of ancient fame with the pencil, but certainly a rival 
in producing all the effects of beauty from sound that his 
great namesake did for the sight) came from a side-door, 
bowed slightly, with a sad kind of smile on his pale face, 
and disappeared behind the high altar where stood the 
organ. All was now silent except the roar of a mighty 
wind that was sweeping over the mountain-top. I sat and 
listened, and a solemn awe stole over me as I began to 
remember the knees that had pressed this pavement, the 
forms that had moved here in gown and cowl, all carried 



THE GREAT ORGAN. 297 

away on the winds of century after century. Then stole 
out on the air a low, sad, thrilling note which struggled 
at first as if it was an unearthly voice endeavoring to 
catch the key-note of our suffering nature. It sobbed, 
and broke, and wailed mournfully a little while, and then 
it rose and swelled, until it caught the voice of the wind 
that was thundering over the mountain-top, and like a 
cataract let loose it sprang into unison with the tempest. 
Then the story began. It was not Fra Bartolomeo that 
did it, at least that thought never entered my mind; it 
was the spirit of the splendid instrument, shut up I know 
not how many years in the old chapel, that now began to 
recite the story of the monks of St. Benedict. One died 
in prison, and the clanging doors made discord with his 
miserere; one perished on the battle-field, and the rush of 
armed hosts, the tread of horses, fierce battle-cries, chok- 
ing death-gasps and shrieks of agony mingled with the 
solemn nu?ic dwiittis. One sank in the ocean, and the 
waves dashed over rocks as the story of his death was re- 
cited. One died in the arms of his mother, and her 
voice, intensely human and womanly, wailed over him. 
Then the history rose to greater themes, as men measure 
greatness, and I heard of kings and priests in many lands 
who had honored the order, and their national hymns, 
one after another, shook the walls of the gorgeous church. 
I can give no idea of the power of this instrument. 
Every ordinary wind and stringed instrument was imi- 
tated with perfection ; and the human voice, in solo or in 
chorus, seemed to be a part of. the organ. For just one 
hour I sat in silence, awed, astonished, nay, astounded, 
by a power I had never dreamed of before. Then it 
ceased, and in the silence Fra Bartolomeo glided noise- 
lessly across the church, pale, slender, with the same sad 



298 I GO A-FISHING. 

smile on his face as he bowed and disappeared toward 
the cloisters. 

Many a time, in the northern forests, of a Sunday even- 
ing when the wind is high among the pines, I hear the 
sound of the organ at Monte Casino. 

As I write that sentence it occurs to me that some 
reader, not familiar with forest life, may regard it as a 
pure imagination when one says that the sound of the 
wind is like distant music. But it is no imagination. In 
our . city lives we are, without knowing it, in a constant 
noise. There is no moment of day or night in New York 
when the air is not vibrating with sound. The innumer- 
able occupations of men, the wheels on pavements, the 
very voices of many thousands in ordinary conversation, 
keep up a constant disturbance of the atmosphere, so that 
what we call silence in the city, or stillness, is only com- 
parative. A good illustration of this is found when one 
goes out of town by rail, carrying with him the city noise 
in the roar of the train, until he is set down at a country 
station, and the engine drags away the last of the sounds 
of the town, leaving him on the platform in the country 
stillness. The ear is at rest for the first time in weeks or 
months, and the silence is wonderful. 

For this reason in town we do not often notice the pe- 
culiar tones of the wind, although sometimes they are re- 
markable enough as the air is broken into vibrations by 
chimneys and the corners of window-casings. The voices 
of the wind are so various in the forest that, notwithstand- 
ing all which has been written of them, I am persuaded 
the thousandth part has not been told of their wonderful 
power. ^Eolian notes are the subject of innumerable 
poems, and no one has written of the country without 
reference to them. But it is not alone in melody and 



THE SOUND OF BELLS. 299 

music that the wind gives its utterances. There is scarce- 
ly a sound that ear of man has heard which is not im- 
itated in the forest, by day or by night. The thunder of 
waterfalls, the roar of cars over city pavements, the clatter 
of machinery, the rattling fire of distant musketry, the 
tramp of men on the march, singly, in squads, in masses, 
the shouts of mobs, the huzzas of political meetings, the 
low hum of conversation, the tones of single voices speak- 
ing slowly, the prattle of children, the wails of sickness 
and suffering, the far-off shout of a well-known voice — 
these are but a few of the innumerable sounds which are 
to be heard in the forest when the wind rises or falls. 

Every one has heard of the strange sound which travel- 
ers on the Eastern deserts report, the sound of church- 
bells pealing over the lonesome sands. I heard that 
sound once on the Arabian desert, and have described it 
elsewhere. I heard it once in an American forest. I 
awoke at midnight from deep sleep and lay awake listen- 
ing to the wind, when suddenly the bells began to sound. 
It was as if six or eight heavy bells were ringing at a dis- 
tance, precisely as the fire-bells of New York sometimes 
sound to one on a vessel in the lower bay. Sleeping by 
my side was one who had heard the same sound with me 
on the desert. I heard it for full ten minutes, then sat 
up to listen, and my movement woke the sleeper. 

"What is the matter?" 

" Nothing. Only listen and tell me what you hear." 

" I hear the bells !" 

Clearly there was no mistake of imagination about it, 
and we heard them for some minutes longer, until they 
died away in the louder rush of the wind among the 
branches of the trees that were close above us. 

The vibrations of the air which produce certain sounds 



300 I GO A -FISHING. 

may be excited by various causes, and it is not strange 
that the wind, finding its way over rocks and sand-hills or 
among the myriad leaves and branches of a forest, should 
fall occasionally into vibrations such as bells or human 
voices excite. Hence it is not mere imagination which 
hears familiar tones in the wind. 



XV. 

IN NORTHERN NEW HAMPSHIRE. 

Trout abound in the northern portions of the Middle 
States and throughout New England, but of course are 
disappearing rapidly from the more accessible waters. 
It is quite out of the question to answer that often-re- 
peated inquiry of the lover of angling whom business 
keeps in town, "Where can I find trout-fishing without 
going far away ?" 

There are streams within a half- day's ride of New 
York in which there are still many trout, and where an- 
gling is free to all. But as the habits of the trout are 
somewhat uncertain, it is by no means a sure thing to go 
for a single day to such a stream with the anticipation 
of much sport. 

The northern parts of New Hampshire and Maine, 
and the eastern parts of Canada, with New Brunswick 
and Nova Scotia, afford doubtless the best trout-fishing 
in America or in the world, with perhaps the exception 
of our Rocky Mountain and other far-western regions, 
where trout abound as they did a few years ago in Maine. 
It has been elsewhere stated in this volume that the 
brook trout grows to a much larger size in the waters of 
Maine than any where else, so far as our present knowl- 
edge extends. In Rangely Lake and the waters flowing 
from it we have taken many speckled trout weighing 



302 I GO A -FISHING. 

eight and nine pounds. I have entire confidence in the 
evidence afforded me there some years ago, by lumber- 
men whom I knew, that two brook trout have been taken 
near Indian Rock weighing eleven pounds each. Read- 
ers of newspapers must bear in mind when they meet 
with stories of large trout, that there are several varieties 
of the family, and that the lake trout grows to an enor- 
mous size in some waters. But it is safe to believe for 
the present that no one has seen a brook trout, or speck- 
led trout (with red and gold spots), the Salmo fontinalis_ of 
the books, exceeding the weight of those taken in Maine, 
in the head waters of the Androscoggin. This chain of 
lakes, Rangely, Moosetocmaguntic, or Mooseluckmagun- 
tic, Wellokenebacook, Mollichunkamunk, Richardson (dif- 
ferent names which have been given sometimes to the 
same lake, and sometimes to parts of a lake), pours a 
strong river into Umbagog, and from this flows the An- 
droscoggin. The Magalloway River comes down from 
the north and joins the Androscoggin two miles below 
Umbagog. All the smaller lakes and streams which 
flow into these waters abound in trout. The Maine wa- 
ters have been visited of late by so many anglers, and so 
much has been written about them, that they are well 
known. Not so the Magalloway waters. . But the time 
is not far distant when all this country will be familiar to 
lovers of the angle, and after them will come the lovers of 
scenery, and the lonesome places will be peopled, at least 
in the summer season. 

We made up a party at the Profile House to drive 
through Northern New Hampshire. 

The Mountain Ranger is a coach of coaches. It has 
four seats inside, together capable of holding twelve per- 
sons, and two seats in front by the driver. Thus it will 



ABOUT BAGGAGE. 3 03 

carry ordinarily fourteen persons, with their baggage, and 
the baggage customary among White Mountain travelers 
is heavier than it ought to be. Our party consisted of 
five gentlemen with their wives, and our baggage was 
light. We were therefore very comfortable in this long 
coach with six horses. Before we left the Profile House 
we made out a list of necessaries of life, without which 
civilized ladies would inevitably perish, and for these we 
sent to New York. 

Every man should understand a rule of travel as well 
as of going a-fishing, which is, that if ladies are of the 
party (and they may almost always be), they must be 
made comfortable. Gentlemen can "rough it," but ladies 
should never be allowed to rough it if there are means 
of transportation. 

There is nothing more absurd and unreasonable than 
the growling which some men make about the quantity 
of ladies' baggage. When you have ladies in charge, 
take every luxury that they may require. It is as easy 
to take care often trunks as two, and the secret of pleas- 
ant travel is to avoid as far as possible all that can be 
called " roughing it," by having in the luggage every pos- 
sible comfort. In this way invalid ladies may travel 
with ease and benefit. Many travelers of both sexes suf- 
fer in health from exposures which would have been 
wholly unnecessary had they taken a proper amount of 
luggage. Men do not handle their own trunks in this 
age of the world, and there are always and every where 
plenty of porters glad to handle them. Are you crossing 
the desert with your wife ? Add an extra camel or two to 
your train, and carry trunks full of articles that you may 
just by a bare possibility find convenient. Is economy 
an object with you? Then do not take a lady where she 



304 I GO A- FISHING. 

must be without comforts, unless she is thoroughly strong, 
and able to endure as much as yourself. But don't growl 
about luggage. It is one of the most stupid fashions of 
the times. Carry your household goods and gods with 
you if you want them, and pay for them like a man. 

We did not know that we should have any rough times, 
and, as it proved, we did not have any ; but we enjoyed 
ourselves none the less for the provisions ordered in New 
York, and, thanks to the express system, we found them 
at Littleton awaiting us when we met there. I had gone 
to Littleton on Tuesday, having an engagement to fish a 
certain pond fifteen miles from that place, which I fulfilled, 
taking no fish, on Wednesday. On Thursday morning the 
Mountain Ranger was at the door, the baggage and stores 
were loaded, and at ten o'clock we were off for the un- 
known regions of the North. From Littleton to Lancas- 
ter was a short day's ride. We discovered nothing re- 
markable along the road except a hotel, beautifully situ- 
ated on the bank of the Connecticut at Dalton. It looked 
like a pleasant and quiet place to do summer loitering. 
They said pickerel fishing was good thereabouts, but trout 
were not common. There was a large hotel in Lancas- 
ter, which is a pleasant village. We strolled up the bank 
of Israel's River in the evening, and made a few casts 
above and below the paper-mill dam. Chubs rose to the 
fly, but no trout. Evening came down very placidly in 
this delicious valley. The Baron was out sketching till 
dark, and found other artists in fields and forests around. 
They frequent the place, and there is no better evidence 
of its beauty of situation. Since the days of which I 
write the rail has been extended from Littleton, through 
Lancaster, to Northumberland. In the morning we drove 
on to Northumberland station, on the Grand Trunk Rail- 



COLEBROOK. 305 

way, and, as our road thence lay for twelve miles parallel 
to the rails, we relieved the horses by taking a convenient 
train just then coming along, and waited for the Mount- 
ain Ranger again at North Stratford station. Some fish- 
ermen had been drawing a seine in the Connecticut just 
as we arrived, and we saw the product of the haul. It 
was a few bushels of fish that in my boy days we used to 
call wind -fish, and some large suckers. Nothing else. 
But I have taken large trout in the Connecticut at this 
spot. I recall one evening when I was detained there, 
and went over to the Vermont side of the river with a fly- 
rod, and killed four noble fish at the mouth of a mill- 
stream that pours into the Connecticut below the bridge. 
A little of the old camp experience came into play here, 
and Dupont and myself distinguished ourselves by get- 
ting dinner ready. On the whole it was a success, and 
the coffee was superb. The evening ride of thirteen miles 
to Colebrook was fine. The roads in this part of the 
country are excellent, and the scenery varied and always 
beautiful. There are two Monadnocks in New England. 
I don't know which is the original, but that one which 
looks down on Colebrook is a fine old hill, and viewed 
from the front of the inn on a Sunday evening, when one 
bright star rests like a beacon on its summit, it is very 
grand. 

We were to rest here over Saturday and Sunday, for, 
as we were going into unknown regions, it was not safe 
to arrive on Saturday night with ladies on the east side 
of Dixville Notch, where it was quite uncertain whether 

we should find even a house. St. A and the Baron 

agreed to drive through the Notch on Saturday and ex- 
plore, and Dupont and I began to inquire about the fish- 
ing. We had a dozen streams and lakes placed at our 

U 



306 I GO A -FISHING. 

service. But we had heard mention of Diamond Pond, 
and our longings were thitherward. It was variously 
stated at ten to fifteen miles' distance, by a road which 
led through the wildest section of the country. So we 
arranged for horses and a guide, and began in the even- 
ing to unpack our fishing tackle. It was amusing to see 
the expressions of countenance, and hear the brief and 
sententious remarks made in the bar-room when our light 
Norris rods were brought to the view of the Colebrook 
fishermen. For they were anglers, and not to be despised 
let me tell you. What American angler, however skilled 
in the later years of his life, dare think without respect of 
the up-country fisher who taught him his first cast with 
an ash pole and a brown cock's hackle ? There is much 
written and much said about the superiority, now of fine 
tackle, now of birch and hemp. The accomplished angler, 
with slender rod, multiplying reel, silk line, and thorough- 
ly assorted book of flies, is sometimes indignant at the 
remark that a barefooted boy with pole and line and 
worm can catch more trout than he. It is sometimes 
true. Along a stream where trout are plenty, the short 
rod and worm bait will kill them much more rapidly than 
a slender rod and a landing-net. But the angler does 
not always seek many fish, and the difference is in the 
pleasure of the skillful sport on the one hand, and the 
rapidity of filling a basket on the other. Nevertheless, 
as I have clearly stated before, I am not one of the 
class of anglers who despise bait-fishing even for trout, 
and when I want them in quantity for any purpose, I use 
whichever I find to be the most taking lure. I can see 
the scornful smile of some of my readers at this avowal. 
Be as scornful as you please. It is to my notion the ex- 
treme of nonsense for modern fishermen to read old Izaak 



DIAMOND POND. 307 

out of the society of anglers because he fished with bait. 
Izaak was wise in his generation, and among the wisest 
of his doings was this same act of sagacity as a sports- 
man — using bait when the fish would not take a fly. But 
I wander, and return to the subject, only adding that deli- 
cate tackle will sometimes take more and larger fish than 
homely rods and lines, and Diamond Pond itself shall 
prove the proposition. 

They said our Norris rods would not lift a trout to the 
surface, much less out of water. They forgot, as most 
people do, that a dead fish is little if at all heavier than 
water, and does not need lifting to the top. The mys- 
teries of a landing-net are seldom understood by those 
who are accustomed to throw their fish over their heads 
on the end of a short line and long stiff rod. " But your 
rods are too short. You can not throw your fly far 
enough. If you fish Diamond Pond you must have a rod 
fifteen feet long, and a line twelve feet at least. The 
trout are very shy there." Reply : " We can throw a fly 
seventy-five feet with these rods." Rejoinder: incredulous 
smiles, and a murmur in the corner of the room that they 
are " not so green in Colebrook" as we seemed to imagine. 

The morning of Saturday was by all odds the most glo- 
rious morning on record. It was a day of days. Such 
a sky ! such sunshine ! such rich, cool atmosphere ! Our 
guide failed us at the start, and two hours' delay ensued. 
A volunteer was gladly accepted. He was a gentleman 
who was seeking health by a long stay at Colebrook. He 
had been frequently at Diamond Pond, and knew all about 
it. He proved the best of company, and the horses went 
like the wind under his handling of the ribbons. I don't 
think horses ever did better work. It was fifteen miles 
if it was a rod, and we did it in an hour and three quar- 



308 I GO A- FISHING. 

ters, up hill and down, through forest, passing fine farms, 
then new frame houses, then log huts, and at last pulling 
up short at the end of the road by a small cottage and a 
barn, wherein we placed the steeds for rest and refresh- 
ment. 

In later years Dupont and and I have made 

that little house a fishing home, and have seen there such 
days of long delight and starry evenings, full of all man- 
ner of joyousness, as I shall never know again. 

A half-mile walk, through a, primeval forest, brought us 
to the bank of the lake. Look again at your map of New 
Hampshire, if you have one, and note the locality. You 
will not find the lake laid down. There are a hundred 
lakes hereabouts which are unknown to the map-makers. 
It is possible, however, that you may find the head of the 
Androscoggin River flowing west out of Lake Umbagog, 
and receiving the Magalloway River before it bends south- 
ward. Now go up the Magalloway ten miles, and you 
will find the Diamond River coming into it from the west. 
Diamond River flows from Great Diamond Lake, which 
receives by a short stream the waters of Little Diamond, 
on whose bank we stood. It is nearly round, not much 
over a thousand feet in diameter, surrounded by forest. 
The bank is nowhere accessible for casting a fly. There 
was one old boat on it, a wood-cutter's scow, which should 
have been found at the spot where we pushed through the 
low brush to the water's edge. But it was missing. A 
few shouts brought a response, and at length the boat 
came in sight, paddled by one man and holding three 
others, who had been in camp across the lake for several 
days. The boatman was a Frenchman, who lived in one 
of the log huts we had passed, and who, on learning that 
we wanted the boat, exhibited a common phase of human 



DIAMOND POND. 309 

nature, by showing us his rough side first. He was going 
back to ferry over the baggage from the camp, and then 
was going to use the boat himself for a few hours' fish- 
ing. It was already noon, and the prospect was poor ; the 
Frenchman was surly and pushed off. While he was 
gone the camping party assured us that we would get no 
trout, for various reasons, chiefly that they had got none 
for two days, that the water was very clear, the sunshine 
very bright, the breeze had gone and there was no ripple, 
and finally, when they saw the light rods, they stopped 
explaining and simply laughed at us. So did the French- 
man when he came back with the luggage, and when a 
couple of dollars had civilized and converted him from a 
foe into a friend. 

" I'll paddle you about myself. I know all about the 
lake, but you'll get no fish with those rods here." 

"Why not?" 

" Because you can't get near enough to the trout." 

" We'll see." 

So out we pushed on the glassy surface of the Diamond 
in a broad noon sunshine. A poor prospect for trout, 
and it must be confessed that every one we had seen 
since our arrival at Colebrook had agreed with every one 
else that we were not to take any. 

The old boat was wet and dirty. I cut plenty of pine 
boughs and filled her up, threw myself down on them, and 
luxuriated in the sun and air as we went around the edge 
of the lake, impelled by the noiseless paddle of the skill- 
ful Frenchman, who proved a first-rate fellow. I was idle, 
and Dupont sat gravely looking at the- glassy surface, 
doubting much whether it was worth his while to exercise 
his wrist. We saw no break on the surface any where. 
The Frenchman and our Colebrook friend were regretting 



310 I GO A -FISHING. 

that we had not brought long rods, and protesting that it 
would be a waste of time to remain on the lake. " I have 
seen fine trout rise inshore there," said the Frenchman, 
as we passed a sort of cove, a rock rising between us and 
it some twenty or thirty feet off. Dupont, without rising, 
prepared for his first cast. A' few swift swings of the rod 
while he reeled off the required length, and seventy feet 
of gray silk line was in the air, then a short twist of the 
wrist and the little red ibis fly touched the water, away 
beyond the rock in the middle of the cove, full five rods 
distant. Nor had it touched the surface before there was 
a sharp rush and plunge over it, and my friend quietly 
said, " I have him." The look of the Frenchman was in- 
finitely ludicrous. When he saw the line gathering in the 
air for the cast, he forgot his paddle ; when the fly went 
into the cove, he stood up with open mouth ; when Du- 
pont said, "I have him," he gulped out, "What! a trout?" 
and when he saw the little Norris rod bend to the pull, 
and after a short struggle bring alongside a pound trout, 
which with the aid of the landing-net soon lay at his feet, 
his expressions of astonishment knew no bounds. I was 
so thoroughly occupied in watching his countenance and 
enjoying the surprise as well of our Colebrook friend, that 
for a full half-hour I lay in the end of the boat without 
making a cast. Dupont meantime landed a dozen fine 
trout, and threw back some which were too small for such 
company. When I commenced to work, we had an illus- 
tration of the curious luck of fishermen. Our rods, lirfes, 
leaders, and flies were precisely alike, and we cast within 
six feet of each other, but nothing would rise to me, while 
he took fine fish. For more than an hour I did not have 
one rise, while he was taking plenty. Then suddenly, for 
no cause that I can explain, my luck changed, and I had 



DIAMOND POND. 311 

as many fish as I could handle. When the sun went to 
the westward, and the shadows of the trees began to creep 
out over the water, we moved up to the head of the lake, 
where the water was not two feet deep, and grass grew 
from the bottom in abundance. Here at every cast we 
had fine fish, often two at a time, and once three on one 
leader. The general run of the trout which we took in 
this lake would average something less than a pound. 
Only one I think went above a pound and a half. 

Here was a case for the consideration of all theoretical 
anglers. It was a clear, sunshiny, still day, with a cool 
air from the northwest, the previous day having been hot. 
There was an occasional ripple on the surface, but in the 
main it was glassy. The best fly was the scarlet ibis, 
proved by the fact that with three flies on each leader we 
took three trout on the ibis to one on any other fly. 

We left the lake at half-past four, mindful of a long 
drive over a wild mountain* road, good in the track, but 
narrow and bordered by rocks and ravines. I have for- 
gotten the number of trout taken, but according to the 
best of my recollection it was upward of fifty, all fine in 
size and quality. Along the road home our Colebrook 
friend chanted the praises of delicate tackle, and in the 
evening the crowd in the hotel bar-room looked with won- 
derment at the catch, and examined the rods and lines 
and flies alternately, and listened to the marvelous ac- 
counts of our companion, who clinched his stories with 
the bold assertion that "while we were coasting down the 
north side of the lake, those two gentlemen were throwing 
their flies into the shadows on the south side and pulling 
great trout clear across the pond." 

On Sunday we rested quietly, attending the morning 
service at a little village church. 



312 I GO A- FISHING. 

On Monday morning, having a favorable report from 
our explorers, we pushed on for Dixville Notch. The 
roads are good in all this part of New Hampshire. Our 
route lay up the Mohawk River, which, flowing from the 
Notch and receiving other streams, empties into the Con- 
necticut at Colebrook. As we rode along we noted that 
trout were rising in the pools visible from the road. It is 
doubtless a stream well worth fishing. 

At length we began to ascend toward the Notch. The 
forest closed in. The trees not only met above the road, 
but they fairly closed the road with long, slender, leaf- 
covered branches, so that the carriage sailed through a 
sea of leaves, parting them on either side as a boat parts 
the water. Thus for two miles, when suddenly we came 
out of the thicket and found ourselves at the gate of the 
Notch. 

It is one of the wildest and most imposing pieces of 
rock and mountain scenery on the Atlantic side of our 
country. Totally different from, and therefore not to be 
compared with any of the passes among the White Mount- 
ains, it has peculiar characteristics which are not equaled 
elsewhere. In general it may be said that the Notch looks 
as if it had been produced by a convulsion of nature, 
which broke the mountain ridge from underneath, throw- 
ing the strata of rocks up into the air, and letting them 
fall in all directions. The result is that the lines of strat- 
ification in the solid part of the hills point upward, some- 
times nearly perpendicularly, and several pinnacles of 
rock, like the falling spires of cathedrals, stand out 
against the sky. On Saturday the Baron had made the 
ascent of one of these pinnacles or spires, and came near 
being converted into a St. Simeon Stylites, for the rock 
crumbled behind him, and left him no visible way of re- 



DIXVILLE NOTCH. 313 

turn after he had reached the lofty summit. With phil- 
osophic calmness, however, he sketched the scene from 
that point, perhaps intending to throw it down to St. 

A as his farewell work; but having finished his 

sketch, he accomplished a descent which was perilous in 
the extreme, and which indeed to our eyes on Monday 
seemed incredible. 

Up the wild pass the Mountain Ranger pressed. The 
road was now the solid rock. The vast walls closed in 
on each side of us. A few hundred feet up the steep hill 
brought us to the summit of the pass, and the carriage 
stood still across the point of rock. It was a little past 
twelve o'clock noon, and the sun was behind the very 
peak of the precipice which towered some five hundred 
feet above us. A cold wind rushed and roared through 
the Notch. Its sounds were curious, sometimes almost 
human, as if there were inhabitants of this weird pass who 
were angry at our invasion. The marked characteristic 
of all the view was the worn-out, used-up appearance of 
every thing. The rocks were all decayed and crumbling; 
the mosses were brown and dry; the bushes were little, 
old weazen-faced bushes ; the very sky seemed brown or 
brassy overhead. 

It is a very remarkable, a wonderful piece of scenery, 
and taking in connection with this the various views along 
the road, I have no hesitation in saying that the drive 
from Colebrook, through Dixville Notch to Bethel, is the 
finest drive I have ever found in America. I remark in 
passing that any ordinarily strong wagon, carriage, or 
buggy will go safely enough through this road. No one 
should think of attempting to travel in New Hampshire 
with a light-built city carriage. 

We walked down the sudden plunge of the road east- 



314 I GO A- FISHING. 

ward from the summit, and soon reached the Cold Spring. 
It is verily cold. A mere trickling, drop by drop, of 
water ; but I think a thermometer would show it to be as 
low as 40, and possibly lower. 

If any one ask you whence the name Dixville Notch, 
there is no better reason to give than this, to wit, that once 
a party of ten persons from New York, a gay and joyous 
party, full of enjoyment, forgot here for a while the outer 
world and made this the city of their habitation ; for 
where one eats one inhabits. And did we not eat there? 
In the eastern part of the pass near the road on the left 
is a flume, a gorge of the rocks through which a crystal 
stream leaps babbling as streams are wont. We rested 
there, and the horses ate their provender while we lunched. 
It was a group which might well have given a name to 
the place, that picturesque assemblage under the old trees 
by the road-side. We had intended to bake some trout, 
but languor and laziness came on us, and we sat down on 
the soft pine leaves and drank in the deliciousness of 
"doing nothing." 

An hour, two hours passed swiftly by, and we again 
commenced the journey. The road was fine, and we 
rattled along rapidly through the forest, following the 
descent of a swift and increasing brook, which rises in 
the Notch, is called Clear Stream, and empties into the 
Androscoggin a mile below Errol Dam. The road after 
some twelve miles of forest emerged on farming lands, 
and at length crossed the Androscoggin by a covered 
bridge. We did not cross, but turned short to the left up 
the river, and again into the woods. 

The sun was setting beyond the Dixville Hills when we 
emerged from the forest at Errol Dam, and our six-horse 
team, not a bit wearied with the journey through the pass, 



ERROL DAM. 3 I 5 

dashed up a slight ascent to the door of a neat frame 
house standing a hundred feet or so above the river. 
The Androscoggin, leaving Lake Umbagog some six 
miles above this spot, flows sluggishly in a black, deep 
stream to this, its first obstruction. The river is here 
nearly two hundred feet broad. The dam, being intended 
solely for timber purposes, is a fine structure, with six 
sluice-ways through which logs can be passed down. In 
the running season they are here counted and the toll 
imposed. The sloping log-ways through the dam are 
about a hundred feet in length, heavily timbered, with 
gates at the upper end, which may be entirely closed. 
The river above the dam is broad, smooth, and flowing 
gently, with a scarcely perceptible current ; but as it ap- 
proaches the dam the black surface bends suddenly down- 
ward with a graceful curve, and the water rushes head- 
long into the sluice-ways, which it enters some thirty or 
forty feet below this curve in the surface. On the north 
side of the river, near the dam, stood the house of which 
I have spoken. Originally this was designed solely as a 
place of residence for the lumbermen engaged in work, 
but the proprietors had added a front building to the old 
cottage, and our surprise was great when on entering it we 
found an abundance of clean, neat rooms, simply but beau- 
tifully furnished, and the whole establishment better in ap- 
pearance than nine out often of the large hotels in our cities. 
Evening was at hand, and the roar of the river was in- 
viting. Dupont and myself hastened to unpack our tackle, 
and went down to the water to try a few casts in the twi- 
light. The deep basin at the foot of the dam presented 
the most flattering prospect for trout, and we whipped it 
for some time, but without a rise. Then we essayed the 
black water above the dam with equally poor success. 



316 I GO A -FISHING. 

Then we went down to a vast timber-jam, which covered 
the entire river and hid its surface for a half-mile below. 
We tried various openings in this, but although chubs rose 
in abundance we saw no fin of a trout. It was discour- 
aging, and when it became profoundly dark we went back 
to the house in poor spirits, and began to talk of return- 
ing to Diamond Pond. 

The evening in the house was cheery. We gathered 
around a blazing fire in the little parlor, and made merry 
over our position. As the hours wore on we heard a 
sound of singing in the other end of the house, and at 
length the swell of clear, strong voices came in, chant- 
ing old sacred tunes. St. A had found the group of 

lumbermen, and tested their musical abilities to good ef- 
fect. They made the night, now light with the moon, 
ring with the grand old songs which, however rudely 
sung, if but with spirit, are full of power, and stir one's 
heart to its depths. I stood for a little while on the bank 
by the house over the river, and heard the songs strug- 
gling in the air with the tremendous roar of the dam. It 
was the old struggle of nature against the influences of 
Christianity and civilization. The river asserted its an- 
cient right, in hoarse and expressive voice. The song in 
the house mingled with the sound of the river, and gently 
insinuated its tones so that it took possession of the for- 
est forces, and while I listened the song burst into chorus, 
and there was no longer any sound of river to be heard. 
Much so is it with the actual advance of civilization in 
these regions. First come the wood-cutters, using the 
lakes and rivers in their original force ; then follow the 
farmers and schools and churches ; and the land and the 
water are subjected to the power of man and the pres- 
ence of art and Christianity. 



SWIFT- WATER FISHING. 317 

It was a beautiful night. The moon was high in air 
across the valley ; white mists were streaming up from the 
basin below the fall ; weird shadows lay here and there 
on the cleared ground ; the cry of a loon, from far up the 
river, came mournfully through the forest; the water raged 
in the open basin, but the mists above it seemed to hush 
it somewhat, as if they were its masters ; then sleep came 
down peacefully on us all. 

Early in the morning I was out. Immediately above 
the dam lay a timber raft used for repairing purposes. 
This was swinging in the fierce current, held by two stout 
hawsers made fast on the opposite sides of the river two 
hundred feet above. This raft was lying in the swift 
rush of the river toward the sluice-ways, the upper end 
being some feet above the edge of the still, black water, 
and the lower end only a few feet from the edge of the 
dam. Trout ascending the river must make a sharp 
rush of about a hundred feet up the sluice-ways. The 
instant they reach the top, they can sink into the deep 
water of the dam, and here they usually wait to rest after 
the rush. As yet we had not seen any trout, and I knew 
nothing of what to expect in the way of size or strength. 
Standing on the raft I cast on the still water just at the 
edge of the curve, and the fly swept down like lightning 
as I drew across toward the raft. I am particular in de- 
scribing this, as it will illustrate the ability of a well-made 
seven -ounce rod which I was using. A dozen casts 
brought nothing; then came the rush. He went over 
the fly, a foot out of water, turned in the air, and struck 
with open mouth as he went down. Of course he hooked 
himself. No skill was needed to accomplish that. In 
such water with such a leap the trout is sure to fix the 
barb in his lip or jaw. His first dash was fearful. It 



318 I GO A- FISHING. 

was right downward ; then feeling the line he rose again 
and turned rapidly toward the dam, and shot down the 
swift current, seeking to descend the sluice-way. Here 
the beautiful rod came into play, and with its gentle but 
uniform and steel-like spring, it swung him head up be- 
fore he reached the edge of the timbers. If he had gone 
ten feet farther he would have passed under the gate, 
and then it would have been all up with my tackle. If 
he had not been well hooked he would have been swept 
away by the mere force of the current on his body. 
Holding him steadily in the current, meeting an occa- 
sional swift dash, and keeping his upper jaw above wa- 
ter so that the stream poured into his open throat, it took 
not more than three minutes to reduce him to such sub- 
jection that I could swing him alongside of the raft, and 
lift him out with the landing-net. It was a short, sharp, 
and spirited contest, and the little rod did superb execu- 
tion. 

Dupont joined me on the raft before I had landed the 
first trout, and in a few moments was busy as I had been 
with a strong and lively three-pounder, whose strength he 
exhausted most skillfully. We had killed six or eight, 
when I became anxious about my tackle, for it was a 
very risky place to work in. If one of these stout fel- 
lows should once happen to gain the edge of the sluice 
it might be destruction to rod or line, and possibly to 
both, unless I could save them by a miracle of quick 
work. So I went up to the house for a somewhat stron- 
ger and less valued rod. But I had become so accus- 
tomed to the action of the Norris rod, that, after landing 
one fish with the heavier rod, I returned to the other and 
used it till we were called to breakfast. 

The ladies were awake and in the best of spirits. I 



MOUTH OF CLEAR STREAM. 319 

assure you there never was and never will be a more 
brilliant breakfast party on the banks of the Androscog- 
gin, even after those days come, which will surely come, 
when cities will replace the forests. The trout were de- 
licious, the flavor excellent, the flesh firm and rich, the 
color as deep red as the darkest Long Island trout. Our 
boxes of stores supplied abundant variety for the table, 
so that during the eight or nine days which we passed at 
Errol Dam we lived in luxury. 

All along the river, from the dam down to the bridge, 
we found more or less trout during the day. As the sun 
went westward I recalled a talk I had held in the Cole- 
brook bar-room with a stranger, who said to me, " When 
you are at Errol Dam go to the mouth of the Clear 
Stream." 

Below the bridge the Androscoggin takes a short turn 
to the south, and has there formed a broad bay, several 
hundred feet across. On the west side of this the Clear 
Stream comes in; and finding a boat near the bridge, at 
about five o'clock we pushed across, and ran the bow on 
the bank at the junction of the streams. As it was now 
late in the season, this was theoretically a good spot for 
trout to gather, and await the later freshets before they 
ran up the colder brooks to seek spawning beds. Nor 
was theory disproved by facts. We found large trout, 
and abundance of them, and had all the work we wished 
until dark. That evening we killed twenty-nine trout, 
each weighing from two to three pounds. 

Thereafter we passed the days in somewhat uniform 
routine : at the dam in the morning, killing fish in the 
swift water; at the mouth of Clear Stream in the evening, 
taking from twenty-seven, our smallest catch, to thirty- 
four, our largest, every evening between sunset and dark. 



320 I GO A-FISHING. 

One evening we could not find our boat, and walked a 
mile around the bay through swamps and brush, and 
finding a small boat in the Clear Stream, appropriated it 
and had our usual success. We were late in arriving, 
but the trout rose later than usual, and we killed thirty- 
four, which weighed something more than seventy pounds. 
It was profoundly dark and cloudy when we left the boat 
where we had found it, and sought our way homeward. 
But we lost ourselves in the swamp, and plunged into 
holes, and became involved in the snake-like windings of 
a deep, narrow strip of water, and it was nearly ten 
o'clock when we relieved the anxieties of our friends at 
the dam. This was our last night, and the next morn- 
ing we started for civilization via Bethel in Maine. The 
drive down the Bear River Notch is hardly inferior in 
scenery to that through Dixville Notch. All along the 
road-side we found streams with abundance of small 
trout, and mountain and valley views which are nowhere 
to be surpassed. 

In after times I have found no change in the fishing at 
these places, and on the Magalloway, a few miles above 
Errol Dam, the highest desires of the angler, who seeks 
waters that have been seldom whipped, may be fully 
gratified. 



XVI. 

EVENING AT THE FERNS. 

We had been driving all the afternoon over the hills 
of Westchester County and Connecticut, looking at the 
streams in which years ago trout were abundant, but 
from which they have now disappeared. I was visiting 
a friend in Connecticut, one of those men whom to know 
is to love — one who had read the lessons of life to ad- 
vantage — a man of the world who knew the world — a 
scholar who loved books, and with whom it was a luxury 
to talk about them — a traveler who had treasure of travel- 
memory in his heart — a man who made his home a place 
where he and his fair young wife loved to be, and loved 
to have those who were of kindred tastes, and where art- 
ists and students, and men of active business life, and 
divines met in the pleasantest companies, and always 
loved to meet. That was the most charming country 
home in all the land. It was, I say, for my friend Ward 
has gone to a home of even more light and joy, and the 
door at the Ferns is not open now. But it's a pleasant 
home to remember for us poor wanderers. Again and 
again I am deeply grateful for the blessings of so many 
happy memories. I have grown old enough to possess 
more earthly happiness in memories than in possessions 
or anticipations. As life advances this is the experience 
of every thoughtful man. 

X 



32 2 I GO A -FISHING. 

As we rode along that afternoon I recalled the days 
when I had taken trout in the streams of Westchester 
County, and told Ward stories of the old time, and at 
every one of my stories he fired some quaint old English 
quotation, or a pat passage from Horace, or from a medi- 
aeval hymn. For he loved, as did I, the old monkish 
hymns, notwithstanding their bad Latin; and he trans- 
lated some of them with a force and effect I have not 
seen equaled by any other translator. 

We pulled up on a bridge, and I recalled a scene on 
that bridge years and years ago. The stream was broad 
and shallow under the bridge, but narrowed below, and 
fell suddenly a few inches as it passed under a single 
rail of the road-side fence into a deep pool. I stood on 
the bridge and cast a fly over the rail, and struck a half- 
pound trout, and couldn't get the trout up over the rail, 
and couldn't get down from the high bridge to go into 
the field below, and the result was that I broke my rod — 
"alas! master, for it was borrowed" — and lost my trout, 
and learned a lesson. Which lesson may be recorded 
here for young anglers to read. Never make a cast until 
you see your way clear to land your fish if one strikes. 
I remember — and I told the story to my friend — that I 
was once standing on the railway bridge at Rouse's Point, 
where I was waiting some hours for a train. I had a 
strong rod, and was taking black bass with a small spoon ; 
and at length I walked out on the railway ties, twenty 
feet above the river, and dropped my spoon in deep wa- 
ter. Lifting the rod I could bring the spoon up fifteen 
or twenty feet to the surface, then let it sink, and raise it 
in the same way again. So I did, again and again for ten 
minutes, with no result ; and then, as it came up, I saw, 
directly under and following it to the surface, the gaping 



rouse's point. 323 

jaws of a gigantic pickerel, an eighteen-pounder at the 
least. Just one quick jerk, a pause, and the great jaws 
closed on the spoon. I struck hard, and had him, or 
rather he had me ; for what was I to do with him ? Two 
hundred feet from land, on a pile bridge, twenty feet above 
the water, with such a fish to manage, and a hundred 
piles standing out of water in every direction — this was a 
situation to puzzle an angler. As long as he headed 
southward for Lake Champlain, and swung about in that 
direction, I was confident; but after ten minutes of that 
he came north for the St. Lawrence — down the river — 
passed under me with a swift rush, and then I knew it was 
all up with my tackle. I snubbed him with all the force 
of the rod, but that only served to turn him once after he 
had gone well under the bridge, so that he took a turn 
around a pile, and of course that was the end of the con- 
test. After a reasonable delay, I broke my line by a hard 
pull, and left spoon and pickerel in the depths of the un- 
known. That all came from the folly of allowing a fish 
to get the hook when I was in no position to land him or 
save my tackle. But then my excuse was that I had 
never dreamed of stirring up such a monster. 

We drove homeward. It was an evening in May ; the 
air soft and balmy — a breath of the coming June. The 
flush of sunset sanctified the vast expanse of Long Island 
Sound, and the sails of a hundred vessels were rosy wings. 
So on tropic seas I have sometimes seen here and there 
white pelicans and the snowy spoonbills changed at sun- 
set into birds of paradise. 

There can be no scene more beautiful than was that 
evening view from the balcony at the Ferns. Under the 
branches of the trees, through the masses of the vines that 
overhung the piazza, we looked away off to the south and 



324 I GO A-FISHING. 

west, over the sound to the low hills of Long Island, and 
eastward to the meeting of the water with the horizon. 
The birds were innumerable, and if one had not gotten to 
be accustomed to it, their chatter and song would have 
forbidden conversation. 

Occupying no small part of the piazza was a vast 
aviary, in which Mrs. Ward had a host of pets, the birds 
of many lands. And the afternoon previous Ward had 
gathered some handfuls of the new-mown grass from the 
lawn and spread it over the top of he wires, and, to our 
surprise and delight, two weaver-birds had joyously seized 
the material and woven a marvelous fabric — a hollow 
nest — a bottle with a narrow neck hanging in the middle 
of the cage. They were a fierce little pair of defenders 
of their home altar, and would let no other bird come 
near it; and as we sat and smoked we watched their 
curious and cunning ways, and our talk ran somewhat in 
this wise : 

" Where did they come from ?" 

" Bought in New York at a bird shop." 

" You don't know whether they were imported birds or 
hatched in this country ?" 

" No ; but it would be curious if they were hatched 
here. It would indicate an instinct beyond explanation 
if birds should build nests in that form without having 
been taught to do it, or without having seen it done. Do 
you suppose that the child of ten or ten hundred genera- 
tions of potters would know how to make an earthenware 
plate without being taught ?" 

" No, I don't. But we are apt to confound instinct and 
reason. The common notion that brutes do not reason 
is, of course, erroneous. The possession of memory alone 
does not imply reason, but the use of memory for com- 



BIRDS AT PRAYERS. 325 

parison, or for judgment and decision, is necessarily an 
act of reason. There are few domestic animals which do 
not exercise reason constantly. Many wild animals are 
very sharp reasoners." 

" Did you ever detect reason in a trout ?" 

" Something very like it, but not so clearly indicated as 
in land animals. I have frequently watched trout when 
swimming in groups, as they often do in small lakes, and 
where thirty or forty trout are leisurely moving around 
near the shores, they generally have two or more guards, 
or look-outs, swimming at a reasonable distance in ad- 
vance, who give them warning of any visible danger. 
This and other habits look like reason. But whether fish 
have any means of communication with each other ex- 
cept by sight, I confess I dare not say. I have sometimes 
thought a trout had gone down stream before me and 

told the community to look out for an enemy. A 's 

birds yonder have beyond question means of exchanging 
ideas." 

" You would think so if you saw them at prayers." 

"Wha— at?" 

" Yes ; at prayers. It isn't any thing less. There are 
birds of every country under the whole heavens, and with 
voices as various as the languages of men, and you hear 
what a wild concert of delight they keep up all day long. 
But every day this entire group of birds assemble in si- 
lence, and if it isn't a prayer-meeting I don't know what 
it is. There is no forewarning that we can detect. While 
they are all chattering, singing, playing here, there, and 
every where, suddenly one of them, sometimes one and 
sometimes another, utters a peculiar call, totally distinct 
from his ordinary note. Whatever bird it is, the call is 
much the same, and instantly every bird stops his play 



326 I GO A-FISHING. 

and his noise. They gather in rows on the perches, 
shorten their necks so as almost to sink their heads into 
their feathers, and make no motion of wing, head, or foot 
for a space of thirty minutes, and often longer." 

" But, my dear fellow, when did this occur ?" 

" When ? I tell you it is almost a daily occurrence. 
Ordinarily you can not approach the aviary without 
frightening some of the birds and producing a sharp com- 
motion ; but while this exercise is going on nothing dis- 
turbs them. They are birds of every land and climate as 
you see ; but this is their custom, and no one of them fails 
to attend, or behaves ill in meeting." 

" Queer, isn't it ?" 

" More than queer. It's well worth studying ; and I 
sometimes wonder whether birds in their natural condi- 
tion ever do the same thing. You may think it some- 
thing like mesmerism, for the leader keeps up his curious 
call-note throughout the service. The instant it is ended 
they break up with a shout of delight, and rush around 
singing and having a jolly time of it, as if thoroughly re- 
freshed. What's your theory, Effendi ?" 

" I haven't a theory. It's something new to me. I 
have seen birds talking to one another many a time, but 
I never heard of this idea before. We all know that 
dogs tell each other stories, and it's beyond dispute that 
dogs dream. A bee that has found honey flies off and 
comes back with all the hive. I have often seen a colt 
try to tell a calf something, but the calf was a calf, and 
couldn't understand. In Egypt, the dogs of the cities 
have their quarters, and keep out intruders of their own 
species. I have seen droves of them facing one another 
across an imaginary line, and making no attack except as 
one or more crossed that line, then the whole pack would 



AMERICAN ROMANCE. 327 

descend on the aggressor and drive him back. I fancy 
that the life of a horse or a dog might be as interesting, 
if all its emotions, thoughts, incidents, and dreams were 
written out — an autobiography, for instance — as the lives 
of millions of men and women would be. For, after all, 
innumerable men live and die without enough emotion 
or incident, without enough of hope or passion, to supply 
material for a single day to men like us. 

" Yes, I have thought thus often in Italy, the land of 
romance, when I have seen miserable peasant women 
living stupid lives among old glories. We speak of men 
living like brutes, but that means generally their external 
and visible life. How much lower than brute life their 
mental life is we seldom think. The gaily-dressed and 
brilliant peasant girl is the exception, rarely seen even in 
Italy ; and for one such there are a thousand women 
there who from childhood to old age and the grave have 
never known an emotion of great joy or great sorrow, 
who do not even feel for the loss of children so much 
grief as a bird feels at the death of a fledgling. There's 
a difference in lives, a vast difference; and in our coun- 
try among the higher classes the same differences are 
noteworthy. American life is more emotional than any 
other." 

" You think so ?" 

" I don't doubt it. Little as men think it, there is more 
romance in our ordinary lives here in America than in 
any other country, ancient or modern, of which we have 
any record. There is not only more of the ' rough and 
tumble,' more adventure, collision, sudden change, part- 
ing and meeting, rapid accession and loss of fortune, 
more incident and accident, but the inner life of Ameri- 
cans is more romantic, and the private history of families 



328 I GO A-FISHING. 

is more full of strange and startling occurrences. We 
are a mixed population, made up from all nations ; and 
the most lonesome country village is not surprised at the 
arrival of a Chinaman, a Kanaker, an Arab, or a Parsee. 
We are great travelers, and there is scarcely a country 
girl in the land, who has been to school for a year, who 
does not dream of going to Rome and Jerusalem. And 
many of them go." 

" You are right," said Mrs. Ward, who with John Steen- 
burger came out to the piazza at this moment and joined 
in the talk. " A great many persons imagine that Ameri- 
can life is so very commonplace and of such even tenor 
that romance in connection with it is scarcely possible. 
But there is evidence enough to the contrary. Lady 
Hester Stanhope's life and death are generally regarded 
as making up one of the most extraordinary records of 
modern times. But there was nothing in it really more 
romantic than in the life of your old friend Roberts. 
Surely that poor enthusiastic American's days were abun- 
dantly full of incident." 

"Who was he, Effendi? I never heard of him." 

" A is right. Alfred Roberts was a man whose 

name deserves to be remembered. 

" I met him first some years ago in the street of the 
Holy Sepulchre at Jerusalem. Passing such a man in 
such a place startled me. We did not speak; and I 
met him several times, wondering whose calm pale face 
and gentle eye that was among the grim-visaged Arabs. 

" One evening, when I was seated by the fire in my 
' hired house ' on the Via Dolorosa, burning sacred olive- 
wood from the mountain of the Ascension, and talking 
with my friend Righter (who now sleeps profoundly at 
Diarbekir, on the banks of the Tigris), the old man came 



ALFRED ROBERTS. 329 

in, and Righter, who knew him, made us acquainted. I 
can not describe to you the tenderness of the affection 
which I learned to feel for him in the course of a month, 
during which I saw him almost daily. 

" He was a man of rare simplicity of character. An in- 
expressible gentleness pervaded his whole life. 

" A cooper by trade in America, at Mystic, in Connecti- 
cut, and then in Chenango County, in New York, he had 
lived to be an old man when he conceived the idea of 
devoting his life to distributing the Word of God, without 
note or comment, wherever he could find persons to re- 
ceive it. He had no property or means, but he declined 
a connection with any society, or any personal pecuniary 
aid so long as he was able to work for himself. He ac- 
cepted money to be used in purchasing Bibles and Testa- 
ments, but for no other purpose. He worked his passage to 
Liverpool, thence to Malta, thence to Constantinople, and 
finally to Jerusalem. The journey was one of some years, 
and all the way he scattered the Word of God. In Malta, 
for months, he devoted himself to Italian sailors, and he 
used to say, truly I doubt not, that he had sent more 
Bibles into Italy, by fishermen and traders at Malta, than 
all the Bible and Missionary Societies by any and all 
other means. In Constantinople the American residents 
collected money to present him a new suit of clothes. 
He declined them as soon as he heard the proposal, ac- 
cepted the donation in Bibles, and wore his gray suit to 
Jerusalem, and probably never had another. 

" His faith in the simple Word of God was magnificent. 
It was his whole life. 

" Walking the streets of the Holy City, meeting Greek 
and Jew, barbarian and Scythian, bond and free, he knew 
no language but his mother tongue, yet managed to hold 



33° I GO A -FISHING. 

conversation with each, and to win the admiration and 
affection of all. I know no one in Jerusalem who did not 
love that old man. The monks of the Terra Santa, many 
of whom I knew well, had pleasant words to speak of him; 
Armenian priests looked kindly on him. I don't believe 
that Mohammed Dunnuf himself, the principal sheik of 
the Mosque of Omar, ever harbored an unkind thought 
of the patient, gentle old American, or that a Moham- 
medan boy or woman who knew him would ever spit 
curses before him in the streets, as they did a thousand 
times at me. Pursuing his quiet way, he walked the 
streets of Jerusalem year after year, in the constant labor 
of love to which he had devoted his life. His wants were 
very few, and his expenses a mere trifle. In 1858, he 
yielded to the infirmities of age and disease, and then lay 
for three years on his bed, in the same room in a hospi- 
tal on Mount Zion, patiently waiting the change. 

" I had no words with which to express my own satisfac- 
tion when I heard by letter from the United States con- 
sul at Jerusalem that my old friend had at last reached 
the Jerusalem of his earnest expectation. No more weary 
climbing up the sides of Olivet, to sit down sadly on the 
summit, gazing into the sky which there received out of 
sight his ascended Lord. No more dark nights of sleep- 
less pain on the sides of Zion, praying for the coming of 
the Great Physician with his gift of rest ! 

" I know where they buried him, for the last time I was 
in Jerusalem I went to his grave as to that of a hero and 
a saint. 

" Nowhere on earth does a man sleep the long sleep in 
such company as at Jerusalem. 

" Outside the walls, on the southern slope of Zion, beau- 
tiful for situation as of old, there is a little English burial- 



BURIAL ON MOUNT ZION. 33 1 

place, not far from the Greek and Latin cemeteries. In 
the latter, close under the wall of the city, lies Cornelius 
Bradford, whom many old New-Yorkers knew and loved. 
I know not that any other American, except my old friend, 
sleeps on Mount Zion ; but they have buried him in that 
little English cemetery, which looks toward Bethlehem, 
overhanging the dark valley of the sons of Hinnom and 
the field of Aceldama. In that valley lie myriads on 
myriads of the dead. The descendants of Abraham for 
nearly four thousand years have been buried under the 
shadow of Moriah and Zion. The followers of the camel 
driver lie there in hosts, with faces turned to the grave of 
their prophet. In the old tombs on the hill-side, the 
countless dead of the crusades, with thousands of pilgrims 
from Christian Europe, are heaped in ghastly piles of 
crumbling skeletons. The followers of Alexander the 
Great, the Roman legions of Titus, the Persians of Chos- 
roes, the Moors of El-Hakim the mad Caliph, the Norse- 
men of Sigurd the Viking Crusader, men of every land, 
by millions, lie in that dark valley under the hill of David. 
Somewhere there, the Psalmist king and warrior waits to 
resume his crown and song. Somewhere there, perhaps 
the sister of Lazarus rests from much care and trouble, 
till the Master cometh again and calleth for her. Not 
very far away, Godfrey, who refused to wear a crown of 
gold where his Master had worn a crown of thorns, and 
Baldwin the valiant, lie in rock-hewn tombs, guarding 
the way to Calvary. 

"But when the Lord shall come ' in like manner' as he 
ascended from the Mount of Olives, and the dead, small 
and great, shall rise around Jerusalem, I doubt not that 
among saints and princes and prophets and martyrs, the 
calm face of the old American missionary will be serenely 



332 I GO A -FISHING. 

fixed on the face of his Lord, and the ' Well done, good 
and faithful servant,' will reach no ear in clearer tones 
than his. 

" I saw him last standing in the gateway of my hired 
house in the Via Dolorosa, looking sadly at me as I 
mounted my horse and rode down the filthy street on my 
way to the Damascus Gate, where I left Jerusalem, as I 
then thought, forever. It will be pleasant to meet my 
old friend on the shining pavements of the other Jeru- 
salem. 

" Yes, Ward, that humble life rose to the fullest grand- 
eur. He was a great man, and his story needs no embel- 
lishment to make it something more than a romance of 
the real life of an American." 

"Americans," said John Steenburger, who had been 
hitherto silent — "Americans wander a great deal more 
than their countrymen dream of. I recollect that I once 
had my attention directed to this with reference to one 
little village in New England, and I could recall no less 
than four persons, whom I had met in Asia and Africa, 
who were wanderers from home, settled here and there 
among Mohammedans, all four from that village, and no 
one of them near or knowing of another. I knew a girl 
once, the daughter of one of my neighbors, a farmer well 
to do in the world. She was as bright and lovely a child 
as was ever known in that part of the country. I think 
I might say that she was as beautiful when she grew up 
as any woman that any of you have ever seen. Those 
who knew her best believed that her soul was as pure as 
the spring by her father's door. She was the pet of all 
the country, and her admirers were innumerable. Her 
education was good, and at eighteen she was sent to board- 
ing-school to ' complete it,' as they call it. Once in a 



A ROVING GIRL. 333 

while she was at home during the next two years, and to 
this day they who saw her tell me that she was as gentle 
and lovely as ever was daughter of Eve ; that she went 
back to school with reluctance ; that she parted with her 
father in an agony of tears. This was some years ago. 
I have seen that girl, that fair-haired child of my old 
neighbor, a ballet-dancer on the boards at the San Carlo 
in Naples; and when I sought her out and wanted to send 
her home, she laughed at me, and ridiculed the idea of 
going home to the old farm-house." 

" What became of her ?" 

" I wish I knew. The old man never asks me if I do 
know, but he looks so wis.tfully at me of a Sunday in 
church and when we happen to meet on the road, that I 
do wish I had some intelligence to give him of her, if 
only that she is dead. That would be a comfort. I saw 
her again once under odd circumstances. The Effendi 
and I were in Alexandria, at the Europa, and Caesare, 
the landlord, asked us one morning if we would go to the 
opera in the evening. It was in the days of Said Pasha, 
when Egypt had not as yet been Europeanized, as Ismail 
calls it. An opera in Egypt struck us as odd, and we 
said, ' Yes, get us a box ;' and then went off for the day to 
the Effendi's excavations in the catacombs. In the even- 
ing, after dinner, we had forgotten all about it ; but Caesare 
reminded us, and we started, with two Arabs carrying lan- 
terns, to find the opera-house in a narrow street. As we 
approached we saw them lighting up the entrance, and, 
after a delay of five minutes in a small cloak-room, we 
were ushered to our box. I give you my word we two 
were the solitary persons in the house, and we had Lucia 
for once to ourselves. Was it not so, Effendi ?" 

" Exactly so." 



334 I GO A- FISHING. 

" The company was small, and the opera was cut down ; 
but you may imagine my surprise when, in one of the in- 
ferior parts, I recognized the daughter of my neighbor. 
I never knew whether she recognized me. It was a 
strange affair altogether. I sent for the manager the 
next morning; but they brought me word that the com- 
pany was only a lot of Italian strollers, and had sailed for 
Smyrna that very morning. Effendi, what were you tell- 
ing me about a girl you saw in the East last winter ?" 

" Only another example of American wandering. . It 
was not any one that I knew, but it shows that American 
girls as well as men are sometimes rovers. I saw a very 
beautiful girl on horseback in one of the Oriental cities, 
a slight, fragile-looking creature, a pretty face, remarka- 
ble for large and fine eyes, which struck you as very sor- 
rowful in their expression. She rode well. I met her 
several times. You will not often see a more attractive 
woman. She could not have been much over nineteen. 
Asking about her, I found that she was under the protec- 
tion of a well-known Pasha, but she was not one of his 
wives. Poor fool ! she was and is a fool, if she still lives, 
for her fate is as sure as the succession of days. Several 
men of credibility and position told me that she was an 
American girl, and I once heard her speak English with 
a decided American accent." 

" There is romance every where. A little incident hap- 
pened to the Effendi and myself last summer on the sea- 
shore. We had gone down for a few days of sea-fishing, 
and it happened that the little hotel was suddenly crowd- 
ed to overflowing, so that when we sat down at the supper- 
table it was difficult to get any one to serve us. Look- 
ing for a waiter, I saw, standing on the opposite side of 
the table, a dark-faced girl, of fourteen or thereabouts, 



MYSTERY OF AMAGANSET. 335 

who was staring with all her eyes, and doing nothing. I 
said, ' Will you give me some milk ?' She looked at me, 
but didn't move. She is French, I said, and repeated my 
request in French. She only stared the more. Try her 
in Italian, said the Effendi; and he tried her in Italian, 
but she only stared. Then, in a fit of laughing despera- 
tion, I growled at her two words in Arabic, and she sprang 
for the milk, with a bright smile on her face, and brought 
it. Now that was odd enough in a little American sea- 
shore inn, ten miles from a railway. But it was explained 
very simply afterward. She was a Syrian girl, brought 
home as a servant by an American lady who happened 
to be in the hotel, and had sent her to help serve the 
crowd. Nevertheless, you have the foundation for a ro- 
mance in that story." 

"While you are on the subject of American romances," 
said Mrs. Ward, " I'll read you a letter from the Effendi 
himself, written some years ago, when we had been at 
Montauk together. I don't vouch for the truth of the 
story, but it fits the subject. Wait till I go and find it." 

So we smoked in silence, and the twilight grew dark, 
and at length Mrs. Ward returned, and, sitting just within 
the long window, read what she called 

THE MYSTERY OF AMAGANSET. 

"We left Montauk in the last hours of a delicious sum- 
mer day. As we crossed the plain at Fort Pond we put 
up the largest flock of plover that I have ever seen, and 
got a shot into them at a long distance, which added six 
to the heap already covering the carriage-bottom. The 
noise of their flight was like thunder, scaring the cattle 
that grazed on the plain. 

" The sun was setting as we passed Stratton's, and we 



336 I GO A- FISHING. 

hastened on hoping to reach Napeague before dark, but 
the gloom overtook us before we passed Osborn's (the 
first house), and by the time we reached the Mosquito 
Territory it was profoundly dark, and the savages had it 
all their own way. 

" The next hour was fearful, but as we emerged from 
its horrors on the heights near Amaganset, a cool breeze 
revived us, and the first light of that village cheered us 
amazingly. 

" ' Do you know that there is a mystery of Amaganset?' 
demanded Peter, who rode with the driver, and smoked 
furiously in silence all across Napeague. 

" ' No,' exclaimed the party unanimously ; ' do you ?' 

" ' No,' said Peter ; and the smoke increased about his 
cloudy head. 

"'What the deuce does Peter mean?' suggested the 
Squire, in a low voice. 

" ' I mean this, that Jonathan Pierson told me a story 
once about some Long Island village, and when I came 
through Amaganset the other day, I took it that must be 
the place. The story fits there anyhow.' 

" ' Give us the story and let us fit it then, oh Peter.' 

" Puff — puff — Peter usually pulls hard at the cigar be- 
fore he begins, and we judged correctly that he would 
yield to our entreaties. And at length, little by little, 
with interruptions to relight his cigar, we got the substance 
of it. 

" Along the road that leads to the beach from the lone- 
some village of (Peter called it Amaganset, and 

so will I, and no Amaganset man need trouble himself 
to say it didn't happen there) lay a fine farm, in old times, 
owned by Stephen Laton, a well-to-do man who lived in a 
house by the road-side, with a wife and one child. All 



MYSTERY OF AMAGANSET. 337 

this happened a great while ago, so that the story is more 
easily to be credited. 

" The daughter, Bessie Laton, was a beautiful child, and 
grew up to be a very beautiful woman. Contrary to the 
custom in those days, she was sent away to be educated, 
and for three years, from her fifteenth to her eighteenth 
year, she was in New York, at the house of a wealthy 
uncle, who was to leave her all his property some day. 

" He might have done more for her by looking more 
closely after her life then, for Bessie was no child even in 
her childish years, but always had great freedom of will, 
a strong determination, and more than her share of self- 
reliance. With all this she had an abounding pride, which 
had always stamped her character, and no one who knew 
her well failed to see that she had ambition which would 
rest at nothing short of the highest position in woman's 
empire. She loved and was loved by all the village, but 
she lived a secret life of dreams and hopes and self-prom- 
ises, which her city life afterward helped her to encourage. 

" No one knew what she did in those three years, ex- 
cept that her step grew stately, her air assumed the graces 
of the accomplished lady, and after all she came home 
— to her sea-shore home — a changed woman. The gay- 
ety of her whole character seemed to be lost, and a sore 
and terrible secret evidently preyed on her mind. 

"In this secret the whole village was interested; old 
wives wondered what ailed the child, and old men shook 
their heads and said this was what comes of ' eddicating 
children.' And at last the secret was half told, and Bes- 
sie's name was the by-word of the town. 

" To her mother alone she said, ' I am married, but I 
can not tell you any more until he comes himself to take 
me.' The shame and agony in which her life now burned 

Y 



338 I GO A -FISHING. 

away maybe imagined but can not be told. Years passed 
and he did not come. Alone in the cottage, seldom vent- 
uring beyond its walls, she dwelt in secret, growing every 
day more pale, yet every day more beautiful. Four winters 
had dashed their storms on the Atlantic coast, and a fifth 
was passing, and Bessie was dying as she had prayed to die. 

" It was a wild December night, and there was danger 
of a wreck on the coast, to which all the villagers had 
gone. The guns had been heard booming all the day 
previous, and they said she would go ashore on the half 
flood, and be beyond the help of man. 

" In the house of Stephen Laton the mother and daugh- 
ter were seated, as in many a winter night before, by the 
great fire that blazed up the chimney, silent mostly, yet 
once in a while lifting their eyes each to the other's coun- 
tenance. There was a strange resemblance in the two 
women, though one was old and haggard, and the other 
young and beautiful. The likeness was doubtless in the 
prevailing expression of woe that looked out of both their 
eyes, as they gazed silently and steadfastly into the flash- 
ing fire and listened to the roaring tempest. 

" ' Mother,' said Bessie, springing to her feet at length, 
with a cry of anguish — ' Mother, pray God to let me die.' 

" ' Patience, Bessie, my child, patience.' 

" ' Patience, mother ! I have been patient four years — 
I am patient — but I would to God I were lying out yon- 
der in the old grave-yard, with all the old folk and young 
folk of all the graves, instead of being here to-night !' 

"She was magnificent as she stood there, her long 
white night-robe buttoned to her throat and flowing to 
her feet, as she clasped her hands and looked up to heav- 
en. Certainly she was very beautiful, with the beauty of 
approaching death. 



MYSTERY OF AMAGANSET. 339 

"The tramp of men disturbed the scene, as they 
brought in a body from the wreck. Bessie passed into 
the inner room, whither in a moment her mother brought 
in her stout arms the form of a young, slender, fair- 
haired girl, whose face of very delicate beauty was now 
almost heavenly in what seemed at first the peace of 
death. 

" They laid her in Bessie's bed, and in an hour by dili- 
gent care had succeeded in restoring animation if not 
consciousness. Once she had murmured ' Philippe,' 
and Bessie sprang up with a flush on her countenance 
at the sound, but, sinking back with a half-suppressed 
moan, continued her exertions in silence. 

" In the mean time the bodies of several men were 
brought into the old kitchen. Among them was one 
richly dressed, and bearing marks of rank and wealth, for 
those were days when travelers wore more of the insignia 
of position than now. He was young and strong, and it 
was manifest that he was not dead. But a strange stu- 
por, whether of cold or otherwise, had taken possession 
of him, and he lay motionless on the floor before the fire, 
until a sharp cry from the inner room reached his be- 
numbed senses. 

" The lady had at length opened her eyes, and a sense 
of her position slowly dawned on her intellect. A few 
questions in French, which Bessie understood and an- 
swered, sufficed to explain all, and then she wailed aloud 
in the perfect abandonment of woe — 

'"Philippe, mon Philippe! oh Mon Dieu, il est mort; 
mon ame, mon cceur, mort, mort !' and she sank back 
fainting on the pillow. 

" He heard that cry, and rose to his feet. At first, for 
an instant, he seemed to be confused, but the next mo- 



34° I GO A- FISHING. 

ment the whole truth crossed his mind, and, with a courtly 
bow to those who surrounded him, he said, ' I understand 
all. Pardon me. It is I that am wanted' — and without 
further parley stalked into the room where the two girls 
lay side by side. 

" ' Oh, God, it is he ! — it is he !' shrieked the unknown, 
in a voice of extremest joy, and, reaching out her two 
hands to him with a smile, relapsed into unconsciousness. 

" Seeing two persons on the bed where he had thought 
to see but one, he hesitated. 

" ' I beg pardon — ' 

" At the sound of his voice, Bessie Laton leaned forward 
suddenly and looked into his countenance. No one may 
hope to describe the gleam that flashed across her face 
as she spoke one word — 

"'Philip!' 

" ' Bessie ! Bessie !' said he, staggering, rather than 
rushing forward, and then he fell on the floor by the bed- 
side, his hands seizing and his lips kissing the folds of 
her garment that swept across the feet of the dead girl 
who lay beside her. 

" ' Philip, is it you at last — my husband, my beloved. 
Have you come at last to see me die ?' 

" • Die ! Who talks of death ? Marie, Marie. Bessie, 
wake her, speak to her — rouse her — she is cold. Did 
you say dead ? Dead ?' 

" ' What mean you, Philip ? Who is this ?' 

" ' This ! She is Marie, Marie.' 

" ' And what to you ?' 

" ' To me ? She is my — my — my — ' 

" ' Philip ! Speak not the word ; wife or what, I care 
not. I see all now. Silence, I say ! They have called 
me by the name you have given that child ! Oh wretch- 



MYSTERY OF AMAGANSET. 34 1 

ed man ! Know you not that having left me to bear the 
agony of that curse falsely was enough, but you must give 
the foul name to her too ? Philip, I have it in my heart 
to curse you. I know not whether I should pray God to- 
night to damn you for your sin or no. I love you, I love 
you, Philip, and I hate you too.' 

" She glared at him with her fierce black eyes, and he 
was silent, but looked at her. 

" ' Aye, look at me — your wreck, your ruin. See you 
this cheek — you kissed it, loved to kiss it. It will be food 
for worms next spring. God knows if it be not next week ! 
See these arms. How you loved their clasp, and yet you 
wandered off from them, and sought embraces elsewhere, 
and forgot them. What delights those were, oh Philip ! 
Have you had such with this frail child ? Did you love 
her, Philip ? I love her too, for this, that she loved you, 
and was betrayed by you. Did she know that you had a 
wife, or did she think her cheek the first that ever lay on 
your breast ? Did you ever tell her of me?' 

" She paused and glared at him more fiercely, and he 
was silent still. Only a hoarse murmur as if he would 
speak escaped his lips, but he had not yet spoken. 

" ' And yet I love you, Philip. I love you ! I that am 
dying say it again, again. Dying — oh God, is this life ! 
I prayed just now for death, and now I pray to live, for I 
have found him ! found him in the arms of another, but 
what of that ! I would tear him out of the arms of an 
angel — and clasp him to my own heart to be — as he is — 
mine — my own. Philip, you have killed me. But — but 
— but — lay your head here once more, once more, my 
husband !' 

" She reached her arms out to him, and he threw him- 
self across the dead form of the French girl, into the em- 



342 I GO A -FISHING. 

brace that waited him. Their lips met, and they were si- 
lent while life grew to immortality of joy in that long kiss, 
and then there was a cold shudder in her frame — a re- 
laxing of the clasp — a strange fierce smile on her face — 
and they carried him away. 

" She did not die till two or three weeks later, but she 
never knew father, mother, or husband again. 

" Who he was no one ever knew, for his lips were sealed, 
though he watched by her until she died. Then he dis- 
appeared, and the people for years after that wondered 
over the story. A stone by her grave rescued her name 
from infamy, though its story was brief and indefinite. 
But the villagers readily believed good of one they had 
loved so well, and it was even whispered by some that 
the husband of Bessie Laton was a king's son. 

" Years afterward, one of those wandering sons of Long 
Island, who are to be found wherever the traveler has 
gone, was in the presence of a monarch whose name is 
known in history and story. That traveler, though but a 
boy when Bessie Laton died, remembered with perfect 
clearness the face of her husband, and he now saw it 
once more. But the position of the tall and stately man, 
with dark face and downcast eye, standing on the right 
hand of his sovereign, forbade any attempt to remind him 
then and there of the tempestuous night when he found 
his betrayed and deserted wife dying on the shore of 
Long Island. 

"You may well believe that Peter's story lasted till we 
reached Easthampton. Now don't let any Long-Islander 
bother you by doubting this story, and disputing Peter's 
facts. It happened somewhere if it did'nt on Long Isl- 
and, at least Peter says so, and who can tell how many 
and what secrets the grave-yards of the old country vil- 



JOHN LEDYARD. 343 

lages keep low under ground ! What red lips, could they 
open in the dust, would tell love tales ! What forms, 
could they move, would nestle in the clasps of love, those 
close embraces of which the grave itself and decay and 
dust can hardly bar the memory ! What thin old lips 
would whisper stories of youth and passion and madness." 

" Is that all of it, Mrs. Ward ?" 

"All." 

" Is it true ?" 

" Ask the Effendi." 

" How much of it is founded on fact, old man ?" 

" Upon my word, John, if any one but A had said 

it, I wouldn't believe I ever wrote the letter. I remem- 
ber nothing about it. But I'll tell you what I do remem- 
ber — talking about wandering Americans — and that is 
how I once hunted in Cairo for the grave of John Led- 
yard, whose life was of the most romantic kind. I always 
had a boy's admiration of him, and the first time I went 
to Cairo I had it prominently in mind to see his last rest- 
ing-place. It didn't occur to me that I should have any 
trouble in finding it. 

" I had thought of taking a walk around the city, and 
calling at three or four places to make inquiries ; and in 
my ignorance I had supposed that an hour's inquiry here 
and there would soon determine, one way or the other, 
whether I could accomplish my object. 

" My wish was a pious one. I believe that all Amer- 
icans feel some interest in it, though I am not aware that 
any one had before made the attempt that I made to 
gratify it. 

"From childhood I had heard Ledyard's name men- 
tioned frequently in the family, as a relative and friend of 



344 * GO A -FISHING. 

my father's father, and his letters to his mother, few of 
which have been published, had formed my study when- 
ever I could get hold of the dim old manuscripts. I had 
a boyish veneration for his name and memory, and as I 
grew older I studied much his bold and ambitious char- 
acter. It was my pleasure to trace his eventful history 
from that adventurous voyage down the Connecticut in 
his canoe, through all its devious ways around the world, 
up to the moment when a dark veil is suddenly drawn 
across it and the eye can no longer follow it. 

" It was in Cairo that he died : no one knows where, 
or how. The biographies of him are brief in their ac- 
counts, and the private information which is possessed in 
the family is quite as brief. It is understood only that he 
was taken sick while waiting to commence his voyage up 
the Nile, and that he lay in one of the convents, then the 
only places in which Christian strangers found shelter, 
and finally died, alone or attended only by unknown 
priests. 

" None who have studied his ambitious but gentle and 
affectionate character could fail to be interested in the 
obscurity which surrounds his last moments, or to imag- 
ine the visions of his home that must have haunted his 
dying couch. The sounds of early years, the roar of the 
Connecticut, the bell of the chapel in college, the surf on 
the beach of Long Island, the wind among the pine-trees 
over his mother's house, all these doubtless disturbed (or 
did they calm ?) his fevered brain. If he spoke any thing 
in his delirium, it must have been of the great name he 
was to win for himself in his life of bold travels, of the 
bitterness of death now when his brightest dreams were 
to be realized, of hope and ambition disappointed, and 
with these he mingled, as always before he was accus- 



OLD CAIRO. 345 

tomed to do, affectionate words for the few that he loved 
as his own soul. But of all this no record remains ; nor 
is it known whose hand closed his eyes, and composed 
his weary limbs, which after long travel had at length found 
rest. All this I thought to inquire about, but I had little 
hope of success when I knew more of Cairo. 

" If in a convent, Ledyard probably died in one of the 
Latin, Greek, or Coptic convents, for there are more than 
one of each in or near Cairo. 

" In the Latin I caused inquiries to be made, but with- 
out success. There were no books, no records, no old 
men, no one who could furnish any information on any 
subject later than eighteen hundred years ago. Elsewhere 
I conducted my own inquiries. 

"We mounted the donkeys one morning, and rode to 
an Armenian church, which stands in a cemetery about a 
mile from the city. 

" Winding our way for two miles through the dark nar- 
row passages which pass for streets, we emerged at the 
gate that leads to old Cairo, and cantering along the road 
in the midst of a crowd of donkeys, camels, women with 
fruit, children carrying melons as large as their heads on 
the top of them, men riding donkeys they could much 
easier have carried, beggars in troops, and Bedouins in- 
numerable, we at length reached the church and entered 
it. The style of the interior was a remote imitation of 
European churches ; but it was a small, meagre, and un- 
interesting affair, and, having glanced at its paintings, I 
addressed myself to my business. Vain attempt. The 
attendant was an old man, but he never heard of an 
American dying there, and there were no books nor rec- 
ords — nothing whatever. I might as well have inquired 
in Paris. So I went on down the road to old Cairo. 



346 I GO A- FISHING. 

" Old Cairo is three miles from modern Cairo. The 
desert sand stretches between them. As you approach 
the old city, riding over the sand-hills, you will perceive 
several miniature cities — small dense masses of houses, 
presenting only a blank wall to the outside view, through 
which a low arched door-way or heavily barred gate gives 
admission to the lanes or streets of a densely populated 
village. Imagine a hundred houses packed closely to- 
gether, with no streets, but only passages, four to eight or 
ten feet wide, winding around among them. Such are 
these settlements of Egyptian Christians. Fully protected 
against Bedouins by their lofty walls, they have but to 
close the gates against an attack and go to sleep in their 
houses. It was such a place as this before which I drew 
rein, and we dismounted and entered. A bright-looking 
little girl was the porteress, and led us in. We asked her 
the way to the church of the Greeks. She would show 
us : so we followed her up one alley and down another, 
up a long flight of stone steps, up another longer, across 
a marble pavement, up another and a fourth flight of 
steps, and she then called aloud and left us in the room 
alone. It was three stories from the ground, and while 
we wondered where we were a young priest advanced, 
and with a huge key opened a door before us, and we 
found ourselves in the Church of St. George. It was a 
strange and curious looking little chapel, hung around with 
pictures that might have been of the fourteenth century, 
so quaint and intensely horrible were they. Men with 
giant heads and figures disproportioned stared on us 
from the panels, but there was nothing to interest us, and, 
after a brief glance, I proceeded to make my inquiries. 

"A more stupid specimen of humanity one could hardly 
find, and yet he was not so stupid looking. But it was in 



A GREEK DECEIVER. 347 

vain that I endeavored to ascertain any thing about the 
American traveler. He was unable to tell me any thing, 
and I doubt whether he knew of such a place as America. 
I asked him to go into the convent and bring me any 
books that they had. He produced some old manuscript 
Prayer-books, but nothing of value, and I gave it up in 
disgust. I asked him if there were not any of the other 
priests that could possibly give me some information. He 
said ' No; there was no one that knew any thing about it.'" 
' No old men ?' ' None.' I knew he lied, but what could 
I do ? We wanted to find the way to the Coptic church, 
which we knew to be near by, and within the same walls. 
The one we particularly wished to find is the oldest, and 
is said to cover a grotto in which Mary and Joseph, with 
the infant Savior, rested and lived while in Egypt. We 
asked him to direct us. Here stupidity vanished, and de- 
ceit and lying took its place. Be it known that he and his 
sect deny the authenticity of this Coptic grotto. Hence 
his unwillingness to direct us to it. He said he had never 
heard of such a place. ' But it is near here?' ' No, it is 
not. There is no such place. Joseph and Mary never 
were in Cairo.' 'But there is such a place, and it is close 
to this spot.' He did not know of any Joseph that was 
ever in Cairo but Joseph Saladin, and perhaps it was 
Joseph's Well we were looking for. That was at the cit- 
adel in Cairo. By this time we saw the fellow's drift, and 
we gave him a chance to practice lying. We cross-ex- 
amined him, and he added denial to denial, and we left 
him. 

" Not a hundred yards from him, in the same village, we 
found the church, the little girl leading us. The old and 
dirty Arab who opened it for us to enter was the poorest 
specimen of a sexton I had ever seen. He had not 



348 I GO A-FISHING. 

strength enough to help bury a ghost. But he showed 
us the church, and under its pavement the grotto, into 
which we descended. It was possibly an early chapel — 
one of those subterranean places of worship used by the 
Christians in years that are now forgotten, and over which 
they afterward built their church. But there is no ev- 
idence even of this, nor is there book or record of past 
years by which to determine even the period when the 
structure above the ground was built. 

" Tradition says that it is as old as the days of the Em- 
peror Diocletian, and Wilkinson describes an inscription 
of that date somewhere in the community which is in- 
closed within these walls ; but we could not find it. Nor 
could we find the tomb of Ledyard, nor trace of it. The 
miserable old keeper of the church showed me a pile of 
manuscript books, but they were only Coptic forms of 
worship. He held out a plate for bucksheesh as we came 
out of the door, which we deposited, whereupon he dropped 
the plate and held out his hand for some on private ac- 
count, assuring us that the former donation was purely for 
the public. We begged him to take his share out of the 
public account, and putting our sticks across the backs 
of twenty beggars who denied us exit, escaped into the 
air, having accumulated such quantities of fleas as tor- 
mented us till night-time. The garden of the Greek con- 
vent remained to be seen, for here in former years the 
Greeks were accustomed to sell graves to English Chris- 
tians. But it was also their custom to sell the same 
graves over and over again, so that no certainty of re- 
pose was guaranteed by the purchase. Alas for Led- 
yard ! He was not rich, and I doubt much if any one 
was with him when he died who would have paid a 
price for a burial-place for him when all the desert 



ledyard's grave. 349 

lay unbought around Cairo. And if he was buried here 
he was disturbed long since to make room for his suc- 
cessors. 

"My search was vain. I continued it persistently. 
Through various persons in Cairo I attempted to institute 
inquiries, but the answer was always the same. No one 
remembered him, none of the old men had any recollec- 
tion of his death, no books remain to speak of him, no 
record was made, or if made, none was kept of that pe- 
riod, and I believe I may consider it settled that the 
grave of Ledyard will never be found until He finds it 
who will lose no one in the awakening. 

" There was one other, and but one other, direction to 
look for his resting-place, and that was, I believe, the 
place where it is most probable that he lies. 

" Around the walls of Cairo roll the waves of desert 
sand. When you pass out of the gates to the eastward, 
the instant you leave the city you look back at the walls 
and gates, and before and around you at the desert. 
There are no suburbs. But on these hills of sand lie the 
dead Moslems. Thousands and hundreds of thousands, 
millions of men lie in this dust, awaiting the coming of 
the angel. Here lie a hundred thousand men that heard 
the war-cry of Richard Cceur de Lion; here lie a hun- 
dred thousand men that saw the face of Louis the Saint ; 
here lie hosts of those that fled before the arm of God- 
frey. And from those days to this the dead of Cairo have 
lain down in the dust around their city walls, calmly con- 
fident that they will not oversleep the day when they shall 
meet their prophet. 

" I stood on one of the hills and saw the sun set, and I 
imagined for one instant the scene which would be pre- 
sented to the eye if the covering could be thrown back 



35° I GO A- FISHING. 

and the graves exposed to view, and I shrank in horror 
from the ghastly vision. 

" But somewhere here I think the tired traveler found 
repose, and I trust will find it undisturbed. It were bet- 
ter to sleep thus, with all the old dead of a thousand 
years, than to sleep in a bought grave at the mercy of a 
Greek Christian. To him it was terrible to die thus. To 
no man did death ever come with more of terror. But I 
doubt not that when his stout soul fully realized the pres- 
ence of the dread angel he thought that, after all, next to 
the church-yard at his home, where his mother's eye would 
look on his grave till she slept by his side, this sleep in 
the sands of the Arabian desert, on the banks of the lordly 
Nile, was what he would have chosen who had seen all 
the world to choose from." 

"We have talked enough of wandering Americans," 
said Ward. " Let us go in and have some music." 

And we went into the large room, which Kensett and 
Church and Mignot and Haseltine and Casilear and 
other friends of my friend had helped to adorn and make 

cheery ; and Dr. C came over from the parsonage, 

and we discussed original sin and trout, Shakespeare and 
Miss Braddon, Bernard of Clugny and Bret Harte, and 
so the evening passed into night, and the Ferns fell asleep 
along toward the breaking of the next May morning. 



XVII. 

GOING HOME. 

The sun has gone down. The stars are beginning to 
be visible. The breeze has died away, and there is no 
ripple on the lake, nor any sound in the tree-tops. Let 
us go home. 

The contentment which fills the mind of the angler at 
the close of his day's sport is one of the chiefest charms 
in his life. He is just sufficiently wearied in body to be 
thoughtful, and the weariness is without nervousness, so 
that thoughts succeed each other with deliberation and 
calm, not in haste and confusion. The evening talk after 
a day of fishing is apt to be memorable. The quiet 
thinking on the way home is apt to be pleasant, delicious, 
sometimes even sacred. 

I am not sure but that many anglers remember with 
more distinctness and delight their going home after days 
of sport than the sport itself. Certainly the strongest 
impressions on my own mind are of the last casts in the 
twilight, the counting of the day's results on the bank of 
lake or river, the homeward walk or ride, and, best of all, 
the welcome home. For the sportsman's home is where 
his heart is; and most earnestly do I recommend all lovers 
of the rod to find their sport, if they can do so, where 
they can be accompanied by wives and daughters, even 
by children. On this account, if on no other, every one 



352 I GO A-FISHING. 

must be glad to see the formation of clubs whose arrange- 
ments include accommodation for the families of members. 

There is no more graceful and healthful accomplishment 
for a lady than fly-fishing, and there is no reason why a 
lady should not in every respect rival a gentleman in the 
gentle art. 

Shall I ever forget a day along one of the Connecticut 
streams, of which I have spoken in this volume, when 
four of us — a lady, two boys, and myself — took a superb 
basket of trout, and the lady beat us all ? What a sur- 
prise it was when I saw her, far off across a meadow, 
standing alone, with her light rod bending as she gave 
the butt to a strong fish, to keep him from a last rush 
down the rapid ! I hastened to her assistance, but it was 
useless ; for before I reached her he lay on the grass, two 
pounds and three quarters exactly, the noblest trout I ever 
saw taken from a Connecticut brook. 

Make your home, therefore, as near as may be to your 
sport, so, at the least, that you may always find it when 
the day is done. 

I have described in this book a mountain lake, among 
the Franconia hills, which is not known to many anglers. 
As I approach the last pages of the volume, I recall, from 
among a thousand scenes, with especial vividness, memo- 
ries of that lake. I could easily tell why these memories 
are so clear, but the reasons concern only myself, and all 
anglers have their peculiar reasons for best loving memo- 
ries of certain waters. 

My last day's sport one summer ended with a glorious 
evening there. We — Dupont and myself — had recon- 
structed two old rafts of logs and brush, which we had 
abandoned once before as water-logged, but now found, 
floating indeed, but so deep that it was necessary to cut 



FISHING UNDER DIFFICULTIES. 353 

pine boughs and heap on them to give us footing out of 
water. The situation of the lake renders it very lovely, 
as well as very lonely. I have already described it. 

It lies in a basin among lofty mountain-tops, and is 
itself some three thousand feet above the sea. The pine- 
fringed crests around form the edge of the basin, the 
slopes being an unbroken mass of forest, except on the 
north, where a huge, bare, rocky bluff rises about eight 
hundred feet into the air. 

When the sun had disappeared behind the western 
mountain crest, the scene was exceedingly beautiful. The 
lonely pond was a mirror, all wind had gone down, and a 
soft darkness seemed to fill the basin in which it lay, 
while up above and down below the water, and all around 
us, sun-lit peaks were standing out in a clear blue sky. 

I sat down on my floating island of pine boughs to 
watch Dupont — for I believe I am sincere in saying that 
I enjoy seeing another man throw a fly, if he is a good 
and graceful sportsman, quite as much as doing it myself; 
and there is no man's casting I like to see so well as my 
friend Dupont's. The lake was crowded with small fish, 
so that at every cast from one to a dozen would rise. 
They were four-ounce fish, capital for the table, but not 
what we wanted. At length, as he sent his tail fly over 
toward the lily pads, there came that swift rush and swirl 
in the water that is such music to the sportsman's ears, 
and then the slender Norris rod bent as two pounds of 
lively trout-flesh, fins and tail, were dragging it downward. 

If you desire to know what is fishing under difficulties, 
try a light rod on a mountain pond, and cast from a log 
raft covered with pine boughs. Dupont's fish fought hard 
at a distance for a few minutes, then yielded to the steady 
pressure of the rod in a skillful hand, and came slowly in. 

Z 



354 T G0 A- FISHING. 

But when he saw what hurt him — that is, when he saw 
the humanity on the raft — he did just as a hundred fish 
in every hundred do, rushed for the only dark place in 
sight, and that was under the raft. Now remember, you 
who do not understand fly-fishing, that there were three 
flies on the casting-line, each four feet from the other, and 
the trout hooked on the middle one. What would be the 
natural effect of such a rush among the overhanging pine 
boughs ? Of course two hooks would make themselves 
fast somewhere, for a hook always finds solid attachment 
where it is not intended to catch. So Dupont watched 
his fish, and when, with a sharp rush, he tore off the first 
bobber (which, my uneducated friend, means the upper 
fly, nearest the rod), succeeded in swinging him off so 
that his next rush loosened the tail fly, and then, con- 
vinced that the dark spot under the raft was full of ene- 
mies, the trout went away into deep water. Here it was 
easy work to bring him to the landing-net, and I lay on 
my pine-bough island and saw him come out, shining in 
gold and silver and jewels, and said, "A fine fish ! Now 
do it again." And he did it again and again, and the day 
went down almost into darkness, and we had forgotten 
the difficulties and dangers of the untrodden mountain- 
sides which we must cross on our way homeward. 

The twilight lingered long up there, but we pushed our 
rafts to the shore in haste, and plunged into the forest. 
I think I have before alluded to our misadventure on this 
evening. We had traveled this route often enough to 
know it ; but this evening we missed the proper line at 
starting, and the effect of that little error well-nigh proved 
a very serious matter. For a divergence of a few rods at 
the commencement widened to a fourth of a mile by the 
time we reached the mountain-top, and instead of our 



A BREAK -NECK DESCENT. 355 

mossy descent — steep enough, but easy because we knew 
it — we found ourselves suddenly on the edge of a preci- 
pice. Below us the descent for full five hundred feet was 
a vast pile of rocks but a few degrees out from the per- 
pendicular. It was too late to turn back, for the night 
was already coming on. We had not fifteen minutes 
of twilight left. So we commenced the far horn facilis 
descent. It was a break-neck or break-leg operation. 
Dropping from rock to rock, sliding down sharp inclines, 
catching here and there at branches of trees or shrubs 
that gave way with us and let us fall into holes among the 
stones, out of which we climbed, to fail again and again 
into similar openings — how we reached the bottom of that 
descent safely I can not imagine. At the moment we 
laughed at our scrape and scrapes, but when we reached 
more sure footing and a less precipitous slope of the 
mountain we paused for a long breath, and looked into 
each other's faces before we pushed on in the dense un- 
der-brush. An occasional look at the compass by the 
light of a match — for it was now dark — kept us on the 
right course — east half north — until we heard before us 
the welcome dash of the Pemigewasset over his rocky 
bed at the foot of the mountain. The road could not be 
far beyond it, and crossing the river on a fallen tree, we 
pressed on, and emerged at last, with no small satisfac- 
tion, on the track of civilization. 

The silence which filled the valley at the foot of Mount 
Lafayette as we came into the clearing was oppressive. 
I never knew the forest so still. No bird, no insect, no 
living animal uttered a sound. There was no wind to 
move the trees. The voice of the river was inaudible, 
for it flows gently by this opening. I sat down by the 
road-side to gain breath, more exhausted by the descent 



356 I GO A -FISHING. 

than I had been by the ascent of the mountain. Up above 
us, between the tree-tops, was a narrow line of sky, sprin- 
kled with bright stars, that shone as you have sometimes 
seen them on a winter night. 

While we sat there a soft breeze from the south began 
to steal up the valley, and then, borne on the gentle air, 
I heard from far below the sound of the river vexed 
among rocks, and dashing down heavy falls, but the 
sound was not angry ; it was musical and mournful ; it 
was the sound of mingled praise and prayer in some dis- 
tant place of worship, as I have heard the great organ at 
Freiburg, when late at night I have been standing on the 
bridge over the chasm. 

The horses Were not waiting for us, though we were a 
half- hour beyond the appointed time. As we learned 
afterward, the boy who had been sent with them waited 
in the lonesome road until, in the gloom, the trunks of 
trees began to look like men, bushes became ghosts, 
stumps seemed to him wild beasts, and the darkness 
frightened him. So the poor little fellow, after resisting 
the terror that crept over him as long as he could, yielded 
at last, and drove home as fast as the horses would drag 
him. We had nothing to do but to foot it. It was no 
wonder the boy was frightened in that deep valley. As 
we walked up the road we several times saw groups of 
men ahead of us, which wholly vanished as we approached 
them. Once I saw a horse standing by the road-side, and 
Dupont saw it too, and we hurried on, thinking to find 
old Jack and the wagon, but there was no horse there ; 
only trunks of trees, and the starlight creeping through 
and around them. 

Again we sat down for awhile on a great rock by the 
road-side, and listened, if we might perhaps hear the 



THE MEMORY OF PRAYER. 357 

coming wheels. But all was silent ; only that sound of 
the river came up the valley, like the murmur of many 
voices in prayer. 

" It is as if all the dead that lie in the valley were 
praying together in some old church down yonder," said 
Dupont. 

" Do you think there is very much dust of humanity 
here in the valley ?" 

" They say the earth's surface has been used for graves, 
so that the dead lie under every foot of ground." 

" That's all nonsense. If all the men and women and 
children that have died on the earth from the creation 
till this day were gathered, living now, and the breath of 
the Lord should sweep them into Lake Superior, they 
might sink to the bottom and find ample space to lie side 
by side, and have plenty of room to turn if their slumber 
should be restless. If the judgment were set, and all 
mankind called to stand up and answer, they could be 
ranged within sound of a cannon. I don't think that 
many men lie in this valley. The dust of the earth that 
has been man is, after all, very little of it. It is not that 
which hallows ground so much as the memory of man's 
life and love and suffering, and approach to his God. 
Old places of worship are always full of sacred associa- 
tions. Even an old heathen temple is a very solemn 
place. How strange and sweet among our treasures are 
memories of prayer ! Did you never linger in an old ca- 
thedral after the vesper service, and find the atmosphere 
full of holy calm, as if the golden vials of the elders had 
not yet inclosed the prayers of that day ? If there be 
any thing which hallows ground on this poor earth of ours, 
it is that here or there man or woman or child has prayed. 
If I did not believe that little six feet of rock in the old 



358 I GO A- FISHING. 

church in Jerusalem to be the rock on which the feet of 
the Lord first rested when he awoke from the slumber 
of atonement, I would nevertheless revere it as the holi- 
est place on earth, because more knees have pressed it in 
penitential prayer than any other spot in all the world. 
It seems to me that much good paper and ink have been 
wasted of late in discussing this subject of prayer, and 
answering a queer proposition of some one who, wise in 
certain ways, is ignorant from lack of experience in this 
matter. I have great pity for the man whose life lacks 
this experience of prayer and its answers. For such a 
man, knowing nothing of the power of faith, is like a 
blind man who knows nothing of color. I would not at- 
tempt to explain it to him, for I could not. He can not 
understand the terms I use, nor can I explain them to 
him. He will never be wiser for any explanation of mine, 
nor until he meets the Master in the way, and is directed 
to some Siloam, where he may wash his eyes and see. 
Then he will know all about it. Meantime he laughs at 
me ; and I let him laugh, for it does me no harm. Strange 
that wagon does not come." 

"This prospect of going home on foot is not just the 
thing after our experience on the mountain." 

" No, not the thing at all, especially with a strained 
ankle." 

"What, yours?" 

" A little so, I fancy. But let's be moving." 

So we walked along, I limping a little. 

" Certainly this is not what we bargained for. Where 
can that boy be ? I'm in a hurry to be at home. When 
home is bright and pleasant, it's never the thing to be 
going there slowly. We are always in a hurry when our 
faces are once set homeward. You and I have been 



WALKING AND TALKING. 359 

a-fishing in this world a good while, on all sorts of waters, 
and have taken more or less, in the main with quiet con- 
tentment. What is life, after all, but just going a-fishing 
all the time, casting flies on many rivers and lakes, and 
going quietly home as the day is ending ?" 

" Don't waste time with any more moralizing, Effendi. 
What we have before us is now to get ourselves home in 
as sound condition as possible." 

"Well, can't we talk as we go along? That's another 
of the similarities between life and a day's fishing; as we 
go home we like to talk, and generally to talk over the 
day's events. Your basket is heavy, but you carry it 
lightly, because you killed those large trout in the twi- 
light. If it had fewer trout in it, it would feel heavier. 
Life's work well done makes a light load to carry home." 

" Is your basket heavy ?" 

" To-night ? Yes. It's not half full, but I am half in- 
clined to empty it among the bushes. If it were not wast- 
ing the trout, I would. Here comes a wagon or a coach, 
or something — perhaps we can get a ride." 

It was a late extra from Plymouth on the way to the 
Profile, and it was loaded to excess. There was scarcely 
room for our baskets of fish, and none for us. But the 
driver relieved us of our loads, and we plodded on. 

" There you have a simile again. Any one will carry 
your earnings for you. Plenty of people go by you on 
the road of life ready and willing to relieve you of the re- 
sults of your labor, but they don't care to take you up 
and help you along." 

"That's not fair. These people would have carried us 
along, but they had no room; and they took the trout in 
pure good-will, intending to restore them to us when we 
are at home." 



360 I GO A -FISHING. 

" Possibly — possibly — but there is a great deal of self- 
ishness in the world that we don't know of." 

" Come, come Effendi — you are surly and cross. If you 
did break the second joint of your favorite rod on a three- 
ounce trout, you need not be in an ill humor with all the 
world because of it. Let's walk faster." 

" Walk on alone, if you want to ; but I'm going to sit 
clown on this rock and stay here till Jack comes, if it isn't 
till morning. My ankle won't stand any more." 

And down I sat. One can't be always cheery; and 
somehow there came over me that evening a gloom that 
I could not at once shake off. For, to say truth, I was 
thoroughly used up, and had strained my ankle badly in 
the plunge down the mountain. When one is weary, a 
slight ache is a serious impediment. Dupont yielded at 
last to my persuasions, or rather to his own conviction 
that I must be sent for if I were to get to the hotel that 
night, and so pushed on, leaving me alone in the forest. 

The moon had by this time come up above the south- 
ern ridge of Mount Lafayette, and was pouring a flood of 
silver light into the valley of the Pemigewasset. The 
light stole down among the trees, scarcely reaching the 
ground any where, but producing that well-known effect of 
moonlight — the entire transformation of objects — so that 
there seemed to be life and even motion every where 
around me. 

I lit a cigar and stretched myself out on the rock. Im- 
prudent ? Yes, but comfortable. The great trunks of 
trees around me began to look like the forest of columns 
in Karnak. I wondered whether it were really true that 
only a couple of miles from me at that instant were hun- 
dreds of people in a great hotel, representatives of the 
civilization of the century, gathered in a vast drawing- 



AN ANCIENT LADY. 36 1 

room, blazing with gas-light, brilliant dresses, jewelry, and 
all the adornments of modern life. It seemed odd to be 
lying on a rock in an old temple and yet so near to the 
modern world. I asked myself, are they after all very 
different people, that gay crowd at the Profile, from the 
men and women who thronged the old temple ? We 
people of the nineteenth century are guilty of folly in our 
self-admiration, and vastly err in placing ourselves far in 
advance of all ages. Steam-engines and telegraphs and 
printing-presses are mighty powers, but the day and the 
place are far distant from which man will look back on 
this little world and judge impartially of the various evi- 
dences of various civilizations. Even now we can see bar- 
barism in our own governments, and in our own houses, if 
we will but look at ourselves. I doubt very much whether 
the Egyptian lady from whose head I once took a curl of 
hair was not as refined, as civilized, as polished three thou- 
sand years ago as any lady in the Profile House to-night ? 
Here lies the curl before me as I write — a dark brown 
lock, which lights in the sun to-day as it lit when she was 
living ages ago. Her head was covered with curls. Be- 
fore they wrapped her face in the grave-clothes, loving 
fingers twined all the dark masses of her hair into just 
such curls as she loved to wear, speaking, we should say 
in our day, of youth, gayety, grace, and loveliness. For a 
curl speaks. Around it, as it lies there, is a halo, from 
which I can hear voices uttering many evidences of civil- 
ization. She lived in luxury; she wore purple and fine 
linen ; she had jewels on her fingers, and, though she 
never imitated the civilization of modern Africa, which 
wears rings in the nose, she was guilty of the barbarism 
of piercing holes in her ears whereon to hang gold and 
jewels to be looked at and admired. 



362 I GO A -FISHING. 

I never found the head of a dead woman in Egypt 
adorned with false hair, but I have seen abundant speci- 
mens of it from the tombs, where it had been laid with 
other ornaments, as if perchance it might be needed in 
the far-off morning. And this curl adorned a head which 
in life had every claim to civilization which any lady pos- 
sesses who may read these words, and those locks of hair 
have been seen in halls whose splendor surpassed our 
Western dreams, among statesmen and soldiers, from 
whom, if we could unseal their lips, we might learn les- 
sons of civilization unknown to us of the nineteenth cen- 
tury. 

But what was that yonder in the forest which startled 
me so that I sat up on the rock and looked intently into 
the strange cross lights of the moon among the bushes ? 
Who was that, standing beyond the great column by the 
obelisk? and that? and that? Was it a breeze swaying 
the dogwood and moose-berry bushes, or were those ver- 
ily ghosts ? A weary fisherman, resting on his way home 
may well see visions in such a lonesome forest and such 
a moonlight. Face after face looked at me around that 
old column. It was the trunk of a mighty birch, but it 
looked more like the stone reared by Osirei. There was 
visible an old man's face. Alas, for the old man. The 
years that have been counted and stored away in God's 
memory and the memory of men since he departed, have 
made those once solemn and commanding features dust, 
while they have drawn these lines on mine. He was the 
guide of my boyhood, the beloved companion of my ma- 
turing years. His voice was exceedingly musical, as he 
read aloud to me his favorite passages in Homer, and 
bade me translate while he recited from memory the im- 
passioned eloquence of the Medea. He seemed to be 



OLD FRIENDS. 2>&2> 

wondering what his boy was doing there on that rock, his 
eyes flashing back the light out of his own. And while I 
sat there, he vanished and another stood in his place. 
Old Simon Gray, who taught me how to catch trout forty 
years ago, the good old friend of my childhood, looked 
around the column, and I caught the old smile on his face. 
How my heart leaped to see the good old man. How I 
longed to ask him if the chestnut locks of his beloved 
wife lay clustering on his breast in the land of his present 
abiding ! And though he spoke not a word, the old man 
knew my thoughts and answered me : " She is here, the 
beloved of olden times," and as he spoke she looked over 
his shoulder. It was strange, the contrast. I had never 
known her, for she died long before I was born, but I had 
often heard him speak of her young beauty, and now they 
stood before me. He was old, very old, and his white 
locks lay thin on his head, and the smiles of heaven rested 
among the deep harsh lines of sad age. But she was in 
her young, pure, matronly beauty; and her eye, blue as the 
skies of summer nights, and flashing as the stars, gleamed 
with a joy that can not be described. Her long curls of 
chestnut flowed over her neck and down her shoulders, 
like a river of rich, deep, magnificent beauty, through which 
glimpses of her temples seemed like diamonds. And she 
looked at the old man, and did not seem to think him old, 
but lovingly (how lovingly!) she laid her head on his 
shoulder, and wound her arms around his neck, and led 
him away out of sight. And when they were gone, for a 
little while there were only bushes swinging in the wind, 
and now and then the moan of a tree that had fallen 
against another, and complained as the rising wind moved 
it. And then, down the slope, among the trees, where a 
silver stream of water ran over rocks hastening toward 



364 I GO A- FISHING. 

the Pemigewasset, I saw a vision of exceeding loveliness, 
which you might have thought the rising mist above the 
water, but which revealed to me a face of rare and per- 
fect beauty ; and a smile of intense joy was on those 
matchless features, as if they had brought with them a 
memory of the light of heaven. I could not count the 
years since the dust was heaped over those closed eyes 
now bright with the light of blessedness. I could not num- 
ber the moons that have waxed and waned since those 
lips, closed, close shut, were pressed with their last ca- 
resses. And now eyes and lips were smiling the lan- 
guage of heaven. 

It was a vision of blessed days. I did not love Maud 

. But my friend, my almost brother, did, and his 

love was the adoration of boyhood. And she returned it. 
And if there be among the dark books which the record- 
ing angel has gathered in his fearful library, one page of 
white glory, on that page will be found written in living 
letters, letters that will live forever, the story of that gold- 
en love. It perished! Passed out of life, out of earth, 
out of the sun and moonshine of this lower world, but who 
dare say it passed not into some starry home, where God 
hath appointed his children to love on forever and for- 
ever ! aye, forever ! That is the word, written on the hu- 
man heart in letters of fire, of glory, or of agony. 

They died on the same day, though a thousand miles 
apart. The whitest wings of the angels wafted her home- 
ward, and who shall tell the joy of meeting him there ! 
She was brilliant, starry in the splendor of her young pure 
beauty, and more brilliant, more starlike now, as she look- 
ed at me, and turned her face archly away with that 
smile on it as she looked back into the forest and seemed 
to say to me, " Yes, he is there ;" and I gazed and gazed 



GOING HOME. 365 

into the forest, to see, if I could, my old friend, the boy 
with whom I had fished the mountain brooks a hundred 
times in the sunniest days of life ; but I could not see 
him yet, and — 

"What! asleep, Effendi ? Well, if you don't pay for 
this with all manner of aches and pains." 

It was Dupont, returned with Jack and the buck-board, 
and he had found me sound asleep on the rock. 

And as the good horse Jack went up the road at a tre- 
mendous rate, I failed to answer very clearly the ques- 
tions he put as to my folly in thus going to sleep in damp 
clothes on a rock in the open air. For I was thinking of 
home, and who would be there to welcome me. 

"Better than walking this, isn't it, especially as the 
moon is clouded now ?" 

" Yes, yes, on foot or in a wagon, it's pleasant anyhow 
to be going home. Always pleasant, when the work of 
the day is all done, when the sunlight of the day is no 
longer bright, nor the twilight soft and beautiful, when the 
darkness has settled down and we walk only by the light 
of stars. 

"And there's no doubt about it, when one looks up 
yonder through the forest-road, through the tree-tops, 
through the gloom, and thinks of the far-off home and 
the waiting welcome — there's no mistake about it, my 
boy, one can't help wishing he might be sent for with 
swift horses." 



THE END. 



By W. C. Prime. 



I GO A-FISHING. 

I Go a-Fishing. By William C. Prime. Crown 8vo, Cloth, 
Beveled Edges. 

BOAT-LIFE IN EGYPT. 

Boat -Life in Egypt. By William C. Prime. Illustrations. 
12mo, Cloth, $2 00. 

TENT-LIFE IN THE HOLY LAND. 

Tent- Life in the Holy Land. By William C. Pkime. Illus- 
trations. 12mo, Cloth, $2 00. 

THE OLD HOUSE BY THE RIVER. 

The Old House by the River. By William C. Prime. 12mo, 

Cloth, $1 50. 

LATER YEARS. 

Later Years. By William C. Prime. 12mo, Cloth, $1 50. 



Published by HARPER & BROTHERS, New York. 



®"Harpek & Brothers will send either of the above works by 
mail, postage prepaid, to any part of the United States, on receipt of 
the price. 



V I 



-y 






aN 






^ - p f 



v o 



* 



<,v .>> % 



V* 



,0o. 



x ^ 




k* 'c^. ',VJS 










~. 






> v 







vO o 



• \ 



^ * \^r???^* 



J, '<> 










X" 



a- 









s -^ 



^ -^. 



,0 



• 



■** ■%> °. 



! * * *<P v 

,0 o 






c, 












** % 



^ ^ 



>. ■* \ A 



•A 



* X c 



*K-> r,\ 



^£ 



